Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Can’t say that I’m surprised to see you,” said Father. “I have a ticket for the trial for you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I don’t think Major Sirr will be looking for you. The trial is scripted, I gather. Your young friend will doubtless give a good account of himself. Would have made a fine lawyer.”

  “That poor young woman,” Mother said sadly. “I hope she doesn’t go to the execution, and herself losing her twin sister when she was eight and her mother deserting her when she was twelve.”

  “She probably will.”

  “She was interested in you before you went to the seminary, was she not?”

  I could not suppress a chuckle. Mothers are all alike.

  “Better to say, Mother, that I went to the seminary only when it was clear she lost interest in me.”

  “I must say that I have never been able to have high regard for John Philpot Curran,” Father remarked. “However, I never thought of him as a poltroon … I assume that the president of the college gave you permission to be here?”

  “Not exactly but he offered me the use of the horse.”

  “This has to stop,” my father said, lighting his pipe. “Yet it will only stop when the English see that they have to leave.”

  “I quite agree, sir.”

  Thirty years later they have given us seats in their parliament in Westminster. Our men will be clever enough to make life difficult for them. How much longer will it take and how many dead young men and broken young women?

  The trial the next day lasted twelve hours. It was, I thought, for an English trial of an Irish rebel, remarkably fair. They had no need, however, to indulge in trickery or deceit. Bob denied only that he was an agent of France. He stood on his feet in the dock, in full possession of himself. When he rebuked Lord Norbury, the judge, for his illegal jibes, he was calm and reasoned.

  At the end, Bob asked for an adjournment till the next morning. He was obviously tired. He probably wanted to retreat to his cell and polish his talk.

  The court refused his request, perhaps afraid that there would be an attempted rescue. The English also had reason to fear the final words of a man whose dignity and patience had won him the sympathy of everyone in the court.

  Then Bob began his “speech from the dock” which has become a classic of Irish literature. I wrote it all down to give to Sarah the next morning.

  I will cite here, only the most stirring passage at the end, taken word for word from my transcription of his words:

  My Lords—You are impatient for the sacrifice … be yet patient! I have but a few more words to say—I am going to my cold and silent grave: my lamp of life is nearly extinguished: my race is run: the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world, it is the charity of its silence!—let no man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other men, can do justice to my character;—when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then—let my epitaph be written—I have done.

  Bob was moved to Kilmainham so he would have a room and a desk at which to write. He apparently spent the whole night writing, one to his brother Thomas, with a touching reference to Sarah, which the English confiscated, one to Richard, with tender words for Sarah, which also was never sent, and one to me, which breaks my heart whenever I read it.

  Dear John Peel,

  Forgive me if I use the code name which we both have found amusing. There has been little to smile about this last full day of my life, but I smile as I remember the all-too-brief good times we had together at school and afterwards. I had hoped that our friendship would increase through long years of life in a free Ireland. That was not to be. I regret that our rising was ill timed and ill conceived. I regret even more that good men on both sides have died. I have received the Lord’s Supper from one of our clerics and am completely at peace. There will be future conflicts, I am sure, and other good men will die too. Finally, someday, we shall succeed. Perhaps at that time I will be remembered as one who tried and failed.

  My deepest regret is that I have failed Sarah, Dear God in heaven, please take care of her.

  It was good to see you in court today. I know you will pray for me, as you good Catholics do and must. I am grateful for that too. When you are saying Mass as a priest in years to come, I trust you will remember occasionally your school days chum.

  With sincere respect,

  Bob

  Early the next morning I received a hand-delivered note.

  They will bring Bob from Kilmainham tomorrow at 1:00. I would hope you can come to the house where I’m staying and join me in a closed carriage in which I will wait to wave good-bye to him on his last journey.

  Fondly,

  Sarah

  I showed it to my parents at breakfast.

  “You will go of course,” said my father. “You have no choice really.”

  “Poor wonderful child.” My mother began to cry.

  “I hope that cad doesn’t try to interfere.”

  “He won’t, sir. It would reveal to everyone what a cruel man he is. When I return from the … the execution I will take my horse and ride back to the college.”

  “By all accounts he gave a fine account of himself at the trial yesterday,” Father said.

  “Let me read the most powerful paragraph.”

  I read him the passage I had transcribed earlier.

  “Indeed! How terrible to lose such a brilliant young man. However, I think I can safely say that he has not lost. He has beaten the English and will haunt them until someone does write that epitaph.”

  My father, as is usual, was right.

  At 11:00 I rode up to the house in Rathfarnham where she was living. A closed coach waited in front of the house. I dismounted from my horse and handed the reins to a young groom. The door of the coach opened and I entered.

  Sarah, who was all in black, moved her veil away as I sat next to her. Her pale face was dry and composed. She looked so very young and so very beautiful.

  “Thank you very much for coming. I must wave good-bye to him and see the execution.”

  The carriage began to move.

  “No, Sarah,” I insisted, “you must not.”

  “Because of the love between us I must … please do not try to dissuade me. I must … Now tell me about the trial.”

  I offered a version I had carefully prepared in my head at night, unable as I was to sleep. I read her the entire text of Bob’s speech. She listened attentively, nodding several times. She was as self-possessed as Bob was.

  I gave her my original transcript, which I had copied verbatim the previous evening.

  “Ireland will never forget him,” she said. “Thank you for this paper, I shall always treasure it.”

  We were not certain which route the sheriff would take from Kilmainham, so we waited at the head of Thomas Street, knowing that they would have to travel that way to come to the square in front of St. Catherine’s Church, where Bob Emmet was to die.

  Sarah threw open the covered window of the coach and peered out of it. She did not care who might see her.

  Bob walked by us with calm dignity. He glanced at the coach, saw that beautiful face which he so much adored and the brave wave of her hand, and smiled and bowed his head twice.

  “He saw you too. Isn’t he wonderful?”

  “Yes, Sarah. He is truly wonderful.”

  She tapped on the roof and the coachman eased us into the square. I cannot describe even today the details of his hanging and beheading. He remained utterly calm and serene. His last words from the scaffold, I would later learn, were “my friends, I die in peace—and with sentiments of universal love and kindness towards all men.”

  There were thousands crowded in the little square, the men all took off their hats out of respect. Bob tilted his head
in acknowledgment. The crowd protected us from being too close to the ghastly scene. Sarah was not impatient to be closer than we were. The English soldiers and the Yeomen fingered their guns, afraid there might be a riot or a desperate attempt to save him.

  Then they hung the finest Irishman of my generation and cut off his head, a remnant of the old custom of hanging, drawing, and quartering. Then the executioner held up his head. The crowd growled in rage. Sarah gasped and grabbed my hand. The soldiers seem frightened.

  Sarah closed the window, drew her veil, and tapped on the roof. We journeyed in silence back to the house where she was staying.

  At the door she pushed aside her veil. Her face was unmarked by tears. I feared she was close to collapse.

  “My father says I must go to Cork. There as well as anywhere else. Thank you.”

  She brushed my forehead with her lips. As I rode away she opened the window, smiled, and waved at me.

  I rode back to Carlow and arrived late at night. The light was on in the rooms of the president of the college.

  I walked down the corridor and knocked. He asked me to enter.

  “Of course you stayed for the execution.” He sighed. “I would have expected nothing else. You are exhausted. I think we can excuse you from classes tomorrow.”

  I gave him my transcription of Bob’s speech.

  He read it quickly as he reads all things. Then he read the final paragraph aloud, as if to himself.

  “Amazing!” he said. “And from a man no older than you!”

  “In point of fact, two months younger, sir.”

  “You will never forget this day. And neither will Ireland.”

  It took me a long time to recover. I could not sleep, I could not concentrate on the Latin texts, I was inattentive in class. My professors seemed to understand. Bob’s head haunted my dreams as well as Sarah’s smile.

  It was not all over, however.

  I returned to Dublin at end of term. Same old gray, grim, smelly, poverty- and germ-ridden city.

  My parents and my little sisters were glad to see me. Mother gave me a letter addressed to me in a woman’s hand that I remembered

  Could you possibly come by the graveyard of St. Michan Church on Thursday evening at half eight. We will say some prayers by his secret gravesite. I would like you to lead the prayers. We will expect you if we don’t hear from you.

  Fondly,

  Sarah

  I showed the letter to my parents.

  “Of course you will go,” Mother said.

  “No harm in it,” Father added. “As far as the English are concerned, your young friend is forgotten, an unimportant footnote to the act of union.”

  At that time of year in Ireland, 8:30 is the deep of night. I had to pick my way through the fog to find St. Michan. A faint glow in the fog suggested a torch.

  Three women stood around the grave, all in black. Sarah introduced me to Mary Anne Emmet Holmes who, I had heard, was pregnant and in ill health, and her daughter Kitty who was reputed to be suffering from nerves occasioned by Uncle Emmet’s death.

  “Will you lead the prayers please, Father?”

  “Not for a few more months,” I said lightly.

  No laughter.

  But no tears either.

  Rosary in hand, I recited the Lord’s Prayer, then the ten Aves. To my surprise they all knew the words of the “Hail Mary” even though as Protestants they ought not to know them.

  At the end, I said a little prayer for Bob.

  “Heavenly Father, we know that Your servant Robert is with You and that we shall all meet again in Your kingdom. If it is Your will, please tell him that we were praying to You for him and that we all love him and will be with him in spirit all the days of our lives. Amen.”

  They all answered with enthusiastic “Amens.”

  Sarah took me aside briefly.

  “I’m for Cork, the Penroses down there are old family friends. Father wants to get me out of Dublin before the English come to ask more questions. I’m happy to leave. Cork is as good as anyplace else.”

  “God go with you, Sarah.”

  “It is my fault. I killed him,” she said. “He wanted me to go to America with him. I was afraid of Daddy. I made up my mind the day before the day they arrested him. He was in Rathfarnham to see me. If I had made up my mind a day or two earlier, he’d still be alive …”

  “I’m sure God has forgiven you, Sarah. And certainly Bob has. Now you must try to forgive yourself.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I will try.”

  “Promise me you’ll try with all your strength.”

  She hesitated.

  “I promise,” she said at last. “I promise.”

  She hugged me very briefly, then they vanished into the darkness.

  It was the last time I would ever see her beautiful face. I see her often in my dreams, however.

  “I did what I could,” I said to Bob’s grave.

  There is little more to say. Under the kind care of the Penroses, Sarah recovered her vitality and her will to live. She had become famous and was greatly admired all through Ireland. She attracted the respectful interest of Captain Henry Sturgeon, nephew of the Marquis of Rockingham. They were married in Cork in November 1805, two years after his death and a year and a half after my ordination. She left with him and his regiment for England, then for Messina while the war with Bonaparte went on.

  Her letters to her friends indicated that she was very happy in the marriage and even happier when she conceived her first child. The babe was born on the ship returning to England in the midst of a terrible storm and died shortly thereafter. Sarah followed him into the grave two years later, of the White Death, I believe. She was only twenty-five.

  Requiescat in pace.

  27

  “The man had an intense religious experience, didn’t he?” Nuala asked with a tone of awe in her voice. She was standing behind me, bathing me in the smell of spring.

  John Coltrane’s Love Supreme was blaring on our stereo system which plays in most of our house, unless you turn off a specific room at the controls in the kitchen. Why in the kitchen? Because me wife wanted it there so she could make sure the noise wouldn’t bother the children. Since she believes that music is good for me, the speakers in my room are on all the time, unless I walk down to the kitchen and turn them off. Nuala also believed that music should be enjoyed at full volume and, since she was just discovering jazz, the “Trane’s” music was shaking the walls of our house.

  Both the final movement of Love Supreme and my wife’s alluring scent were distracting me. I turned around from my desk to look at her. She was dressed in a flowery spring dress which clung lightly to her body. She also wore a large white hat. Yet a third distraction, or fourth counting the hat.

  “You look and smell ravishing this morning, Nuala Anne,” I said. “Where are you going so early in the day?”

  “Sure won’t I walk by Millennium Park and turn heads in me new spring dress which I bought at a sinful discount!”

  “You should wear a sign saying that the markdown was 75 percent—and how often do I tell you that they mark down dresses because no one buys them?”

  “Sure, this wouldn’t look right on everyone”—she spun around to create the swirl the dress was designed to produce—“but doesn’t it have my name on it altogether?”

  “It certainly does!”

  “Actually, I’m going to the studio to listen to the first mix on me new record.”

  Herself was a perfectionist on her recordings. These sessions on Nuala Anne Sings Gospel would go on for a long time.

  Nuala Anne was in a spring mood, brought on perhaps by the glorious late-April weather, though she never needed external forces to put her into moods.

  “We’re making no progress in this case,” I said.

  YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE FOR BEING GRUMPY IN THE PRESENCE OF THAT SPRING VISION.

  If I want to be grumpy, I’ll be grumpy.

  “Sure we are, De
rmot Michael. Aren’t the pieces beginning to fit together?”

  Nothing would interfere with her spring effervescence. “Is that scent you’re wearing called seduction?”

  “Am I needing spring scent to seduce you, Dermot Michael Coyne, when I want to?”

  “I concede the point.”

  The “Trane’s” desperate appeal to God from the whole human race faded away. The woman was in a teasing mood, not especially erotic, just troublemaking.

  “And haven’t I solved the other mystery already, not that it was terrible difficult?”

  “What mystery?”

  “Sure isn’t there a grand mystery in that second to last chapter you gave me yesterday? And here’s the envelope with me solution. Maybe it’ll cheer you up!”

  We have rules about reading these old Irish manuscripts. I read a section first, then give it to my wife, who naturally has made the rules. Then, after we both have read the penultimate chapter, she seals an envelope with her solution to whatever mystery there might be. Then I read the last chapter to see how the story ends. I open the envelope to see that her analysis was correct.

  “Don’t open it till you read the last chapter.”

  She bent over and kissed my lips with a passion that sent flames through my bloodstream, my nervous system, and my digestive tract. Also other parts of me.

  “I love you something awful, Dermot Michael Coyne. I don’t deserve you, but I’m never letting you go. See you in bed tonight.”

  “I wasn’t planning to leave,” I gasped.

  “Tonight I may just do my Rite of Spring Dance,” she promised as she flounced out of my study. My study indeed. I hoped she’d not mess with the stereo before she left the house. However, in a couple of minutes, Stravinsky music reverberated against my eardrums.

  My virtuous wife had been a singer, an actress, and a dancer when she was an accounting major at TCD (Trinity College Dublin). She has experimented with choreography since she came to America, but only privately. “I’ll have something to do to earn my keep when I lose my voice.”