1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Ned had to pound at the door of Liberty Hall for several minutes before Peter Ennis finally responded. His hair was tousled and his fly only partially buttoned. Ned had to explain his mission twice before making him understand. “How long will it take to get the printing press running again? Do you know how to do that?”

  “Oh, I know how, all right. But it won’t be easy, Halloran, I’m here on my lonesome. It’s half six now; call back in a couple of hours and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  Ned did not go straight back to the G.P.O. His curiosity was getting the better of him and this seemed the perfect opportunity to see what was happening south of the Liffey.

  He was almost across the Swivel Bridge when he heard the unmistakable rattle of machine gun fire coming from the direction of College Green. It could only be the British; the republican forces had no such weapons. Machine guns at Trinity would practically cut off the south city—including the Second Battalion and Thomas MacDonagh.

  Had they been warned?

  He trotted off the bridge and turned right, onto Burgh Quay.

  As he approached the Carlisle Building he muttered, “Making history, Henry,” under his breath. To his surprise he saw that the doors were tightly closed. Normally at this hour the newspaper offices would be a hive of activity.

  But this was no normal morning.

  Ned wrapped his topcoat more tightly around himself to hide his Volunteer uniform, then joined several men in suits and bowler hats who were crossing D’Olier Street. In spite of the upheaval in the city some Dubliners—angry, contemptuous, amused, or oblivious—were attempting business as usual.

  Yesterday there had been almost no soldiers in the streets, but today was different. Tense-faced men in British khaki were everywhere; there seemed to be hundreds of them. Ned tried to appear harmless. I’m just an ordinary bloke going to work, he instructed himself, recalling his playacting days at Saint Enda’s. I’m a newspaperman covering a story; there’s nothing suspicious about me.

  He went farther down the quays to avoid whatever was happening in College Green.

  A British officer coming out of the Clarence Hotel looked at him very hard, as if he could see the pistol beneath Ned’s coat. Ned tossed the man a cheery wave. “Busy today, are you?” he asked as casually as he could, as casually as an innocent person might.

  The man blinked but did not answer. Ned’s smile froze on his face and he walked on. He could feel eyes boring into the back of his neck.

  As he followed the river he could hear gunfire from the direction of Dublin Castle. There was no direct route to Jacob’s Factory that would not take him close to the government compound, so he went as far as Winetavern Street, skirted Christchurch, and began working his way back to Chancery Lane and thence to Whitefriar Street.

  He was nearing Jacob’s when he came upon a detachment of soldiers marching in the same direction. Ned did a sharp about-face and entered the nearest open door, which proved to be the hallway of a private house. A woman sweeping a strip of carpet gave him a startled glance as he slammed the door behind him.

  From an inner room came the fretful wail of an infant. “You’ve woken the babby!” the woman accused him.

  The tramp of hobnailed boots in the street drowned out the cry of the child. The woman darted into the room and came back holding it tightly clutched against her bosom. Her eyes were huge with fear. When the soldiers had passed Ned apologized and left in a hurry.

  He had only gone a short distance when several soldiers coming out of Wood Street challenged him. His hand instinctively slipped inside his coat for Pearse’s pistol. In that moment his uniform was plainly visible. One of the soldiers leveled a rifle at him. “Hold up, you!”

  Knowing he was hopelessly outnumbered, Ned began to run. He dodged into the narrow laneway called Whitefriar’s Place and fled toward Stephen’s Green. He was just in time to see a group of people running across the street from the Green toward the College of Surgeons. A man threw down a rifle; a woman paused long enough to pick it up and hand it back to him.

  The woman was Síle Duffy.

  When Ned shouted her name Síle turned toward him. At that moment a bullet struck the pavement close beside her. Her first thought was not for herself but for Ned, who was running toward her as if unaware of the danger.

  IN the G.P.O. they could hear continuous rifle volleys along the quaysides and the hammering of the machine guns south of the river. James Connolly exuded a reassuring confidence, however, and Joe Plunkett remained convinced that his plans were sound.

  In spite of what he had written in the “Irish War News,” Pádraic Pearse was less sanguine. As he worked on his newsletter in the hours before dawn he had been unable to ignore the constant report of rifles. They seemed so much louder at night. People were being wounded; people were dying. Gunfire made real what had been an abstraction.

  NED ran toward Síle through a hail of bullets. She had her arms out, waving him back, but he could not leave her. He made a dive and caught her around the waist, throwing her to the pavement. Even as she fell she twisted in his arms so that her back was shielding him.

  AT the G.P.O. a foraging party went into Moore Street in search of some fresh fruit and returned to report, “There’s full-scale censorship now. Today’s early edition of the Irish Times had details of the Rising, but it was bought up as soon as it hit the streets. Every copy has disappeared. Other papers went to press late and made no mention of anything unusual. Some don’t seem to be printing at all.”

  “The authorities don’t want us to know we’re winning,” said James Connolly.

  Dispatches confirmed that the republicans were holding their positions around the city. The British army was concentrating on the rebel outposts and failing to make much progress toward Sackville Street itself. “We have enough men posted around headquarters to hold off the enemy for days,” Connolly declared.

  In anticipation of a siege, Pearse gave instructions to begin rationing the food.

  The garrison in the post office was growing. As fighting intensified elsewhere, men who were forced to retreat from their positions made their way to headquarters for redeployment.

  They brought badly needed firsthand information.

  The area around Dublin Castle had been cleared, although the republicans were still holding City Hall and resisting the most determined attempts to dislodge them. “Seán Connolly was shot dead yesterday when he went up on the roof to raise the flag,” an eyewitness reported.

  College Green was under constant fire from Trinity College, where the cadets in the officer training program were getting firsthand experience as they worked alongside seasoned troops. Soldiers under the command of Brigadier-General Lowe were attempting to set up a cordon from College Green to Kingsbridge Station to cut the rebel forces in two.

  There was skirmishing throughout the south city, as well as around the Four Courts on the north side of the river. MacDonagh’s Second Battalion were acquitting themselves well at Jacob’s Factory. Ceannt’s men in the South Dublin Union had fought fiercely to establish their position and, though undermanned, were well entrenched.

  “If we can hold out for a week the British will negotiate,” Connolly assured the others.

  Tom Clarke said, “We have to hang on. If we don’t win independence now the best we can hope for is Home Rule—someday. Maybe. And even if we get it, Carson and his Unionists will make damned sure it includes partition. The mutilation of Ireland.”

  Pádraic Pearse retired to his office to begin work on a new pronouncement, a manifesto intended to rally the good people of Dublin while making the looters feel shame for their actions.6 After a while he came to the door to ask Seán O’Kelly, “Has Ned Halloran returned yet?”

  “Haven’t seen him,” O’Kelly replied.

  WHEN they hit the pavement Ned rolled with Síle locked in his arms. He was not thinking anything; his mind was as cool and blank as a sheet of paper. His muscles remembered the Fianna drill he had o
nce practiced for “being under fire” and took over.

  Then he was up on his feet, still holding her. Bending over, running, zigzagging along the street, dragging the protesting girl with him. “I have to go back, Ned! They need me.”

  “I need you, damn it.” He kept running.

  It was not the Dublin he knew, not anymore. Pedestrian traffic that had made the streets appear normal earlier had disappeared. People who had reported for work had turned around and gone home again.

  Rifle fire and rain. Cobbles gleaming and slippery underfoot, doors and windows resolutely locked and shuttered. The smell of cordite was acrid on the back of the throat.

  A company of soldiers came out of a laneway and opened fire at the fleeing pair without bothering to find out who they were.

  Ned hated the soldiers for making him run. They were trying to kill him and Síle—kill Síle!—and he hated them. They were not the British, not the government, not anyone in particular anymore, just the enemy—and he hated them. If it had not been for Síle, in that moment he would have turned around and fought them all, damn them, fought them to the death and gone down screaming his contempt for them. The enemy.

  “Where are we going?” Síle gasped as they ducked from doorway to doorway, from one uncertain shelter to the next.

  “Headquarters.” He could think of no place else to take her where she would be safe. Besides, Mr. Pearse was expecting him to come back.

  Getting across the Liffey would be the hardest part. No matter which bridge they used they would be exposed. As they fled toward the river Ned mentally reviewed their options. The south end of O’Connell Bridge would be a death trap if the British had control of the area between Trinity and the river. If they went farther west they might be able to get across Grattan Bridge, but it would be a long, dangerous way back to the post office.

  “I can’t run anymore, Ned,” Síle panted.

  “Just until we cross Dame Street.” Leading from College Green, Dame Street was swept by gunfire. They held hands, kept low, and raced across. Ned expected to feel the shock of a bullet at any moment. He was almost surprised when they arrived on the other side of the street unhurt.

  Between Dame Street and the river lay Temple Bar, a rundown area that had once contained the chambers and offices serving the Irish Parliament. In its narrow laneways Ned slowed to a walk and allowed Síle to catch her breath.

  They came out of Crown Alley close to the Ha’penny Bridge.

  In the midst of nightmare the delicate beauty of the footbridge appeared as insubstantial as a dream.

  Ned and Síle began to run again.

  Gunfire flashed from Wellington Quay.

  Had they been on one of the broad spans built for carriage traffic they might have been cut down, but the Ha’penny’s fanciful design saved them. Shots spanged harmlessly off cast-iron railings and arches as they sped across the bridge and turned into Bachelor’s Walk.

  The snipers in Kelly’s cheered them as they ran by.

  Ned and Síle did not stop until they reached the monument to Daniel O’Connell at the foot of Sackville Street. Sheltered behind the Great Emancipator, they stood gasping for breath and looking at one another.

  Ned expected Síle to be faint with terror. Instead she shook her head and told him, “You’re mad, Ned Halloran. Barking mad, did you know that? Perhaps it’s why I love you.”

  She had never spoken those words before. They sank into the marrow of his bones.

  There were new volleys of gunfire in D’Olier Street.

  Ned caught Síle’s hand. “Let’s go. I’ll feel better when you’re safe inside headquarters. Then you can tell me again.”

  She lifted one eyebrow teasingly. “Tell you what?”

  “You know.” Once more he was in a bubble, with the war outside. But this time Síle was with him.

  As they went up Sackville Street she stared at the detritus littering the boulevard. Broken crockery and swaths of torn cloth lay sodden in the rain. Clery’s, the largest store in the street, had been thoroughly looted. Every shop had shattered windows, but the smashed doors had been taken away to add to the barricades. Farther on, two dead horses lay at Nelson’s Pillar. They smelled very dead.

  A number of sentries were patrolling the headquarters area and on the roof were more riflemen, including Des Ryan. Ryan shouted down to Ned, “Been on holiday, have you?”

  “Went south for my health,” Ned called back. “Decided I was a northsider after all, so I’ve come home.”

  One of the sentries cautioned Síle, “Mind the wire, miss.”

  Ned asked him, “Has there been trouble here this morning?”

  “Just looters, but they’ve moved on now. Frank Skeffington was here for a while, waving his walking stick at them and scolding them. He’s as odd as three ears on a fish but he means well. You should have seen them swanning around in fancy clothes. Toddlers in women’s hats and greasy old washerwomen in evening dresses with their tits hanging out—” The sentry blushed. “Pardon me, miss. I forgot myself; that’s not fit talk for ladies.”

  Síle allowed herself a private smile. As they entered the post office she paused long enough to pull Eliza Goggins’s revolver out of the waistband of her skirt and show it to Ned. “This is what sort of a lady I am,” she said.

  Inside headquarters James Connolly was busily dictating orders for reinforcing threatened positions. He stopped long enough to question the couple. The news from Stephen’s Green obviously troubled him, but he greeted Síle warmly. “I remember you; you took first aid lessons in Liberty Hall. We have a few nurses but we can always use more skilled hands.” He gave her a searching look, then added wistfully, “You put me in mind of my Lillie at your age.”

  “Is your wife safe, sir?”

  “Thanks for asking, Halloran. She’s at Madame’s cottage in Balally looking after Poppet, Con’s spaniel. The countess could hardly wait to get a gun in her hand and go to war for Ireland, but first she had to be certain someone was looking after that damned little dog! Women. They’re wonderful.”

  “I agree,” Ned told him.

  Seán MacDermott and a pallid Joe Plunkett, his forehead bedewed with sweat, were again poring over maps of the city while Tom Clarke supervised the weapons’ repair. Pearse was completing a manifesto he would read to the populace later in the afternoon. A constant stream of men was being sent to erect and repair barricades, break through walls for access routes, fortify sentry positions.

  Michael Collins walked by munching a sandwich that exuded a pungent odor of sardines. Síle’s eyes followed the sandwich.

  “Are you hungry?” Ned asked.

  “I’ve had nothing since yesterday morning. I could eat a horse.”

  Collins laughed. “We may all come to that. Good job we shot a couple yesterday.”

  “It isn’t funny, killing horses.”

  He sobered at once. “It wasn’t meant to be, miss.”

  Ned asked one of the women to give Síle some bread and bacon, then went to report to Pádraic Pearse. Pearse looked up with obvious relief as Ned entered the little office. “I was beginning to despair of you.”

  Ned gave a nonchalant shrug. It was easy to be brave now, in Pearse’s company. “I had a bit of an adventure but I’m all right, and I’m returning your pistol with thanks. It hasn’t killed anybody.”

  “Thank God for that.” Anyone who did not know Pearse might think it a strange remark for the leader of an army. “And what of your mission, Ned?”

  “The press should be running at Liberty Hall soon.”

  “Good. We still have heard nothing from the south or west, but we assume the British must be having trouble there because they have put the whole country under martial law. Meanwhile they are bringing in artillery and beginning to cordon the north suburbs.” Pearse’s expression was grave. “At least five thousand troops will be in Dublin by nightfall. Connolly expects an attack on the post office at any time now.”

  Chapter Fifty-three


  SHORTLY after noon word reached the G.P.O. that City Hall had been taken. The fate of the defenders was not known.

  Mallin was holding out in the College of Surgeons, as was MacDonagh at Jacob’s. Daly had his hands full at the Four Courts, and there was no word from de Valera. Fighting was intensifying everywhere, with the numerical superiority of the British being met by such determination that sometimes they were forced to fall back.

  Cumann na mBan were doing more than cooking and nursing now. James Connolly was sending them out as dispatch carriers. They also helped build barricades and even went as far as the quays to bring back the ammunition and explosives that had been removed from Liberty Hall and hidden nearby. With no military status, they worked shoulder to shoulder with the men.

  ONCE Ned had been afraid for Pádraic Pearse to meet Síle, as if those all-seeing eyes would know her history at a glance and condemn her. But since then Ned had learned there were worse things to fear than what someone else—even Pádraic Pearse—might think.

  He went to the infirmary and drew Síle aside. “Can you spare a few minutes?”

  “Is it important?”

  “Very. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Taking her hand, he led her to a small office and tapped on the door. At Pearse’s invitation he and Síle went in together.

  LATE in the afternoon the artillery fire began. Sullen thunder shook the city.

  Ned had been sitting with Joe Plunkett, talking about writing. When Plunkett remarked that he was keeping a journal of events Ned admitted he was doing the same. “In bits and pieces,” he added, pulling the dog-eared notebook out of his pocket to show his friend.