Each volume, however, had one bookmark in common—a photograph of Ronan at some stage in his young life; baby smiles; snapshots on beaches; a dance in rare snow.
Kate walked in to hear of his discoveries.
“Even in his own copy of Treasure Island, and look, the Encyclopedia Britannica, every volume.”
He flicked the pages; the photographs fell out in sheaves. On the stepladder again, he grappled with a shelf of tall books unopened for years; Land Law & Mountain Grazing Rights: Decisions in the Province of Munster since the Act of Union 1801. He handed the books down to Kate.
From one volume fell a long, narrow sealed envelope. Ronan caught it, broke the red sealing wax, and looked inside—more photographs.
Kate suddenly recalled—John had photographed her pregnant. No chance it was Alison; the sisters bore no resemblance. She grabbed the packet.
“I can’t bear this.”
“What’s in it?”
“I’ll show it to you later, it’s just—too sad right now.”
Christmas week rolled on slowly; now the pain of missing his father began to bite in some way every day. All the things he saw and heard and thought—and now he could not share them, could no longer watch his father’s shoulders shake when he laughed; once or twice he remembered what it had been like as a child to cry helplessly. The rich seam of praise had also dried up, and he found that difficult to acknowledge to himself; the quiet compliments, the steady assurances he had taken for granted.
Kate caught the flu; pale and quiet, she wished no connection to anything.
Ronan said, “The house is empty without him.”
Kate said, “Yes.”
Ronan tried to galvanize her. “I haven’t even told you about the Storyteller. That I met him.”
“I know you did.”
“Who told you?”
“Toby.”
“Kate, he said he’d send for me.”
“Then you must go when he sends for you.”
“Do you feel like going for a walk?”
“No.”
“I have an essay to write.”
“For when?”
“A tutorial on New Year’s Eve.”
“What subject?”
“The Penal Laws. But I don’t know how to write it.”
“Try what you talked about—put some blood back on the page. Like your dad said.”
Ronan lit the tall red candle in the window, the Christmas Eve tradition of guiding home the weary traveler. No one dared speak the annual toast, “That we shall all be alive this time next year.”
The dynamic of the household had begun to change; Alison, though needing attention, seemed to replicate John’s behavior—quieter, encouraging and calm. Out of her earshot Kate and Ronan whispered how she had changed; she had ceased to snap or speak brusquely. Josie Hogan murmured to Kate that the house “never felt such peace.”
On Christmas Day Alison led them through different rooms, revealing finds.
“He had pictures of you everywhere,” she told Ronan, opening a black-lacquered Chinese box. “Look—a hundred photographs”: Ronan running, Ronan tumbling, Ronan laughing. Ronan at two, four, six, eight, twelve.
From the linen closet she took a package in tissue paper.
“This was his first gift to me—I’ve never used it,” and she unwrapped a napkin with the word Alison embroidered on it. “He was very proud of it; he bought the linen raw and found a lady to embroider it. Not bad for a boy of twenty-two.”
And she showed them the silver bracelet made of his mother’s spoons, given to John at eighteen for whatever girl he would marry.
“He proposed to me sitting by a lake. I wasn’t able to answer him for five minutes; he thought I was saying I wouldn’t. And my hand hurt afterward, he held it so tight.”
Ronan said, “Toby slipped a ring on Dad’s finger. What was that for?”
Alison looked at him quickly; “I don’t know.”
Ronan said, “He seemed very upset about—”
Kate nudged him, and he dropped it. They spent Christmas night quietly; no turkey, no trimmings, no drink.
“People will expect us to mourn,” said Alison. “So we might as well take advantage.”
Ronan stifled an uncaused, inexplicable anger that took him by surprise.
In the midafternoon of the following day, a troupe of Wren Boys arrived. Faces painted, they bore holly bushes decked with ribbons.
John had long ago documented this pagan tradition and thought it centuries old—these mummers, rough troubadours, bore ironic homage to the tiny wren, the “King of all Birds.” All had faces daubed with color; the leader wore a great cardboard mask. One played a harmonica, one a fiddle, one a concertina, and one a tin whistle; the rest danced whooping jigs and sang ballads.
Alison gave the leader money. He nodded his huge head.
“And we have to shake hands with everybody.”
In Ronan’s hand he folded a note, as though slipping him cash. It read, “Take to the road. Boyne Water”—in familiar handwriting.
Next day Ronan returned to Dublin alone and delivered his essay through the brass letter slot at Professor Ryle’s house. At Kate’s insistence he had accepted an invitation from Father Mansfield.
With much reluctance. “I don’t want to be a Jesuit.”
“He’s not asking you to.”
“Well, I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know him.”
“But you’ve met him. And he’s good company—he’s the one told me the Jesuits have magnificent humility.”
The joke thawed Ronan.
They lunched in the restaurant of the Metropole cinema, a long, deep room with Edwardian airs, all paneling and pristine linen.
The priest beat around no bushes. “Are you very upset?”
“It feels like that.”
“This your first bereavement?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I was thirty-nine when my father died, and it knocked a chunk out of me. And I’m not sure that I even liked him that much.”
He had Ronan’s attention.
“Oh?”
“Well, he didn’t like me very much. Did your father like you?”
Ronan looked at him open-mouthed. “I never thought he didn’t.”
“Then he did like you. Did you like him?”
“Better than anyone.”
“Lucky you.”
Mansfield had substantial gifts—of managing conversation; of knowing when to advance something and walk its terrain; of finding tactical retreats.
“Now, I want to hear about these stories you’re collecting.” Ronan looked surprised. “Kate mentioned them,” said the priest.
Ronan told the Jesuit his long history with the Storyteller, ending with the note from the King of the Wren Boys. The Jesuit took great joy in it all.
“How extraordinary. He’s chosen you. That’s it, you’re his Chosen One. Nothing’s more powerful than being chosen. That’s the connection you feel.”
“Why?”
“In the old days, when a master chose an apprentice or a teacher chose a student, it was to carry something on. To keep an old power alive.”
“D’you think so?”
“Oh, yes—and look at how useful it’ll be. It’ll bring you right up against that great question—What’s the story of our lives? Is it the history that people write down from a political perspective? Or is it the closer-to-home version our grandfathers give us? Or is it both?”
“Should I go and look for this man?”
“Of course, of course.”
Lunch arrived. The priest needed condiments; he looked around in vain.
“Most waiters are blind—all over the known world. The profession requires it. But good diners have the cure for waiter blindness; this is what you do.”
Father Mansfield rose from his chair. Like a soldier at attention he simply stood there, without moving, napkin in hand. In tw
enty seconds two waiters arrived.
“They don’t want trouble,” he said as he sat down. “If there’s trouble, they’ll get blamed—that’s the order of things.”
When coffee came, the priest said rather shyly, “Is it difficult to tell a story?”
Ronan said, “No, Father. Anyone can tell a story.”
“May I try? I should like to have your verdict on my skill.”
“Who’s yours about?”
“Aha! You said ‘who,’ not ‘what’—how very interesting.”
“The best stories are about people,” said Ronan. “At least that’s what I think.”
“This one is about another Englishman in Ireland, a long time ago. Did you ever hear of Edmund Spenser?”
ONCE UPON A TIME—ISN’T THAT THE APPROPRIATE way to begin a story? Yes, once upon a time, in the city of London, lived a man who made cloth. In fact, now that I think of it, ah—he was, he was probably a man who, yes, made clothes, but of course in the, ah, in the language of the time he was called a “cloth-maker.”
This man resided in, ah, what I believe I’m safe in referring to as a, well, frankly [pause], a commercial area of the city, Smithfield, where he married and had an appreciably large family, though not as great as many Irish families, although in poor countries and indeed, England was a relatively poor country, I mean well, every place was poor long ago, I suppose. [A longer pause.] Although I do believe the English have been rather more sparing generally in supplying the earth with their progeny; perhaps we know something about our breed—or about the earth, don’t you think?
London was a rough city in those days. Very rough. I suppose that’s, ah, the right word, rough. If you were rich, and I do mean very rich, you could afford to buy an orange and press it to your nose as you traversed the streets—in order, of course, to, ah, how shall I put it, to deaden the aroma coming off the streets. No drains, you see, no drains. [Much longer pause.] No drains? How terrible.
The cloth-maker’s name was, ah, John Spenser, yes, John Spenser, and in fifteen-fifty-two, to John Spenser and his wife was born the gift of a son. They named the boy Edmund, and through a good family connection his parents, they, ah, succeeded in getting him into a newly opened school that has since become very famous, very famous indeed, it is called the Merchant Taylors school, and, ah, you can understand the pathway, if his father was a tailor or a cloth merchant or both. You see? Merchant. And Tailor, although of course in those days they spelled tailor with a y.
Young Edmund had the education common to many schools of the time, and oh, how I do wish we had it today. By the age of ten, like his great contemporary William Shakespeare (five years younger than Edmund, of course, and not even a neighbor, eighty miles north of him in Stratford-upon-Avon, although Shakespeare did indeed come to London as we, ah, famously know), Edmund had encountered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and very possibly Italian, Spanish, or another one of the Romance languages. Nobody in those days believed that the thoughts of Cato or Erasmus or Homer should be beyond the power of young minds to comprehend, and I have to say I believe them to have been utterly right in this assessment. [The longest pause of all.] Utterly right.
Thus, by the age of fifteen, Edmund would have been required to perform Latin and Greek original composition according to classical rules and would have also been taught to write sonnets after the fashion of Petrarch. His handwriting would have been scrutinized to the nth degree, and his training in the courtesies required to write letters to his betters would have been assiduous.
When Edmund Spenser left the Merchant Taylors school, he entered the University of Cambridge, my own alma mater—
The priest broke off.
“This is no good, is it?”
“No, Father, I mean, yes, it’s very”—Ronan searched—“It’s very—relaxing.”
“You mean you’re almost asleep.”
“No, no, not at all—”
“It’s all right. I should stick to teaching. What I really wanted to tell you is that Edmund Spenser catches my heart, because he too was an Englishman who loved Ireland. He came over here as a public servant—did you learn him at school?”
“No, Father.”
“Then I will personally buy you a copy of The Faerie Queene.” And he began to recite:
“The joyous birds shrouded in cheerful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet;
The angelical host trembling voices made
To the instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmurs of the waterfall.
“Lovely, lovely poet! The Irish scenery we all know, and love is all over that poem. In fact, I used to think that the Faerie Queene of the poem was Ireland herself. And the poem is about all kinds of other things—it’s about morality, it’s about joy, it’s about falsehood, it’s about sin and virtue and gallantry.” He looked at Ronan again. “Did you talk about poetry with your father?”
Suddenly Ronan had no answer. He looked dumbly at the priest.
“I’m sorry, Ronan, that was tactless.”
They sat for some time; the priest broke the silence.
“May I—may I offer a piece of advice?”
With no words available, Ronan nodded.
“Don’t cut off any of your mourning. Stifle nothing. Feel it all, let it course through you like a sluice. Mourning washes us, it cleans our recesses, it brings light to the mind. Very important.”
Father Mansfield tapped his fingers on his closed mouth.
Ronan said, “I don’t know how to mourn.”
“What an intelligent remark!”
“Intelligent?”
“People don’t know how to mourn? How could they? We spend most of our lives hoping we never have to. And—people don’t know how to love, they don’t even permit the word in their vocabulary. Let me ask you—you who seem more sensitive than most. Did you ever tell your father that you loved him?”
“No. It wasn’t a word—in general use. If you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I so know what you mean.” The Jesuit shook his head. “You could do worse than turn to my friend Spenser. ‘Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly ease.’ I think poetry is written more for mourners than for lovers.”
THE PENAL LAWS/BY RONAN O’MARA
IN ENGLISH HISTORY, THE TERM PENAL LAW describes a set of measures introduced to make sure that the Church of England remained superior to Protestant nonconformists such as Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. Above all, it wished to overwhelm Catholics.
However, when the term penal law is used in Ireland, it refers to those laws discussed in this essay; the English crown began to enact them almost three centuries ago, starting in 1691, and they were intended to prevent the Irish not only from practicing Catholicism but from having any customary legal rights.
These Penal Laws were expressed rigidly—and had a very personal construct. The underlying intention in crushing every Catholic had been born of the need to protect the new Church of England, which King Henry the Eighth set up after the pope condemned Henry’s divorce.
No attempt was made to disguise force or intent; Penal Laws for Ireland had titles such as “An Act to prevent Popish Priests from coming into this Kingdom”; “An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery”; “An Act for the Better Securing of the Government against Papists”; “An Act for Banishing all Papists exercising any Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, and regulars of the Popish clergy, out of this Kingdom.” This became known colloquially as the Bishop’s Banishment Act, and it required all Catholic priests and bishops to leave Ireland by May 1, 1698. If any came back, they were to be arrested, hung, drawn, and quartered.
“An Act Declaring which Days in the Year shall be Observed as Holy-Days” gives a clear picture of how viciously the Penal Laws were meant. For Catholics, the Holy Days, such as Christmas or Good Friday, were as important as Sundays, bu
t the new law declared that Irish Catholics abused such days by spending them idle and drunk. Therefore, if the authorities found or had reported to them any man who said he would not work on a Holy Day, he was to be whipped in public, and no trial would be necessary to pass such a sentence.
The Penal Laws came on to the statute books at Ireland’s weakest moment. After the Flight of the Earls, with the country’s morale low, England’s grip tightened. The crown confiscated more and more Catholic lands until, by the year 1700, the Catholic—i.e., native—Irish owned less than 15 percent of their own country. It had been taken from them and handed on a plate to Protestant farmers, whom the English brought in from England and Scotland specifically to “plant” on Irish farms.
Cruelty accompanied such measures. It was not unusual for a Catholic man to find a stranger knocking on his door. Let us dramatize such a happening in, say, county Monaghan:
The stranger on the doorstep would ask to see the man of the house. “Are you called Thomas MacMurrough?”
Mr. MacMurrough of county Monaghan would reply, “Yes, I am he”; behind him, his wife would look over his shoulder at the stranger, and the children would peep around the corners to see who was at the door.
Then the stranger would say, “You have to leave this house now, for I own it.”
“What?!” our Mr. MacMurrough would ask—but he would know well what must happen next.
“I have a piece of paper here, signed by the lord lieutenant of the county Monaghan, and it says that this place has now become my house and land.”
“This house and land has been in my family for centuries.”
At Mr. MacMurrough’s defiance, the stranger would whistle with his fingers, and from behind the trees would march a troop of redcoat soldiers with guns.
Soon afterward, Mr. MacMurrough and his wife and children would be seen walking along the road, with no place to stay that night and no place to live in the future. Had they been lucky—or prudent—they might have possessed enough money for a passage to America. But if unlucky, harsh weather would decimate them in the rough shelters they raised on roadsides, or they would be sold as slaves to the West Indies.
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