1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “It is me,” Ned replied in a ravaged voice. He sounded as if he were not quite sure. “Henry. Thank God you’re here. I thought you might be. Have you…is there any water?”

  Henry gestured, and one of the other reporters ran to bring a tumbler of water. They all gathered around Ned as he drank.

  “Do you need to see a doctor?” Henry asked worriedly.

  “Not now. I have to go back.”

  “Go back? What are you talking about, you can’t go back!”

  “I must, Henry. I have to be with them. I just…Mr. Pearse…” He swayed in the chair and put one hand to his head. “It hurts so bad.”

  Henry moved Ned’s hand and replaced it with his own. Beneath the matted black curls he felt a crust of dried blood.

  “We’d better get that doctor,” his editor said.

  “No!” Ned’s eyes were suddenly clear. Clear, green, and very cold. “No doctor! Listen to me. I’ve come to deliver a message and then I’m going back. I’m headquarters staff, you see.”

  Henry told the others, “There’s no arguing with this fellow when he’s determined.” We’ll let him talk it out, he thought to himself, and then we’ll get help for him. At least he’ll be calmer by then. “All right, Ned; what’s the message? And where is it you’re going back to?”

  “After the G.P.O. was destroyed we hid out in a grocery in Moore Street.1 The woman who lives over the store helped us. This morning we tunneled through into the back of Hanlon’s Fishmongers but we can’t go any farther. There’s British artillery at the corner of Parnell Street and machine gun nests everywhere.

  “We have seventeen men who were wounded leaving the post office, plus a British soldier George Plunkett found lying in the street and wouldn’t leave out there to die. It was the strangest thing…” Ned’s eyes briefly came unfocused. “The soldier kept saying, ‘I want to speak to the big man over there.’2 We told him that was Mr. Pearse, and he said, ‘Yes, I know, I want to speak to him.’ Mr. Pearse went over, and the soldier said, ‘Put your arms around me and lift me up,’ and Mr. Pearse did. The soldier relaxed then as if all the pain went out of him, and in a few moments he was asleep. It was the strangest thing.”

  The men in the newspaper office looked at one another. One of them shook his head.

  With an effort, Ned recalled himself to the present. “There are three women with us, too. James Connolly’s badly injured and in a lot of pain, and Joe Plunkett’s dying, though he won’t admit it. Mr. Pearse sent a scouting party to find a way to get them out so the rest of us could go on fighting, but the scouting party never came back.”

  “If it’s that bad up there, how in the name of God did you get out yourself?”

  Ned gave a vague smile as he repeated the words of his friend Dan Duffy, drowned so long ago. “Och, I have me little ways. I’ve had plenty of practice ducking and dodging.” The smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “Not everyone was so lucky, though. A squad of volunteers tunneled out through a rear wall. They were going to set up a diversion so the rest of us could get to the Four Courts and establish headquarters there. When they came back they reported seeing Michael O’Rahilly’s body lying in a laneway. As he was dying he had dipped his finger in his own blood and written ‘Here Died The O’Rahilly R.I.P.’”

  One of the reporters moaned, “Dear sweet merciful Christ.”

  “Mr. Pearse was so moved he couldn’t speak. He looked out the window instead. A man, a woman, and a young girl were running along Moore Street waving a white flag. Suddenly Mr. Pearse put his hands over his face. He’d just seen the British shoot all three down.”3

  There was silence in the room.

  Ned was panting.

  “Help me get this tunic off him,” Henry said, “and loosen his collar. Can’t you see he’s feverish?” He turned to his editor. “Do you still want to fire this man?”

  “I never said that. As far as I’m concerned he has a job here for the rest of his life.”

  “I hope he lives that long,” said Henry. “Go on, Ned.”

  “The heart seemed to go out of Mr. Pearse then. He decided to negotiate a surrender. The other members of the government argued about it at first; it’s very hard for them. But Mr. Pearse said the Rising must end now so no more lives are lost.

  “He’s going to surrender as commander-in-chief and submit to whatever punishment British justice demands—on condition that the rest of us are granted amnesty and no more civilians are hurt.

  “Mr. Pearse says he will trust the British to act honorably, but Tom Clarke’s afraid they’ll shoot the commander on sight without giving him a chance to…” Ned was fighting to stay conscious. “That’s why I’m here. Mr. Clarke sent me to make sure the truth gets out. He thinks they’ll accuse us of all sorts of things to justify…Look in my tunic, Henry. My notebook’s in the pocket. I’ve been writing down…” A faraway look came into his eyes. Before anyone could catch him he toppled over.

  IN the slanted eyes of the woman holding the pistol was a look of unshakable determination. The new matron stared at her. “What is it you want? We don’t have any money here; this is an orphanage.”

  “Amn’t I speaking the King’s English?” Síle gave a harsh laugh. “ ’Course I’m not, I’m speaking republican English now.”

  This woman’s hysterical, thought the matron. She might do anything.

  “I’ve come for our little girl; you have to give her to me.”

  “Ah now, you wouldn’t want to be taking a child out today. There’s a rebellion going on, don’t you know?”

  “I’ve seen it,” Síle said tersely. “I’ve seen it all, the bombs and the flames. They’re destroying Dublin. What makes you think they would spare an orphanage if the humor took them? She’ll be much safer with me, I can protect her. I promised I would. So bring me Ursula Jervis, please. Now.”

  The pistol pointed unwaveringly at the matron’s heart.

  A few minutes later Síle was holding Precious by the hand and the two were hurrying away from the orphanage. In her other hand the little girl clutched a cloth bundle.

  “Where are you taking me, Miss Síle? To your house?”

  “I can’t take you there, the place is probably being watched by now. We have to find someplace safe.”

  They ran on.

  A rattle of rifle fire sounded only a few streets away and Precious flinched. “Is there anyplace safe?”

  “I don’t know,” Síle answered grimly. “We may have left it too long.”

  They came to a narrow laneway and she turned in. At least the buildings on either side would provide some protection, Síle thought, while she decided which way to go.

  At that moment there was a whistle followed by a thunderous roar. The wall beside them exploded into a deadly rain of bricks and mortar.

  THERE was no way of telling how badly Ned was hurt without a doctor’s examination, and doctors were in short supply in Dublin that morning. Casualties throughout the city were demanding attention.

  “He’s unconscious,” Henry said as they stretched him out on a couch in the editor’s office. “It’s a mercy of God. Otherwise I haven’t a doubt in the world he’d go back and end up like the rest of them.”

  “You don’t think the British will agree to Pearse’s terms?” asked a reporter with a fringe of gray hair around his bald head.

  “Do you?”

  “They will if they have good sense. Right now people are sick of the fighting and the destruction and just want it to be over, and they’re perfectly willing to blame everything on the rebels. But if the British are foolish enough to give them martyrs…Remember Pearse’s oration at the Rossa funeral?”

  Henry nodded. “I remember. I was there.” He thought for a moment, then reached for his hat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I think it’s time I went back to covering the news.”

  THERE was still gunfire in various parts of the city, but the worst was over. Armored cars improvised from boi
ler tanks mounted on flatbeds had begun sweeping through Dublin, knocking down barricades. They were followed by squads of infantry flushing out snipers and taking prisoners. Mopping up.

  Already the Dubliners were beginning to reclaim their city. Scavengers were scrambling over the rubble of buildings like ants on an anthill. A few of the more respectable citizens were cautiously sightseeing.

  If Pearse was going to surrender, Henry reasoned, he would either have to send an emissary to Dublin Castle or go there himself. Instructing his colleagues at the Independent to look after Ned and find him a doctor as soon as they could, he set off for the Castle.

  The seat of government was solidly, almost flagrantly, in British hands. The Union Jack flew from every flagpole and was hanging from windowsills and draped over doorways. Getting inside was an exhaustive process of showing his identification and press pass to one guard after another, each of whom eyed Henry with the gravest suspicion when they heard his Limerick accent. At last he was handed over to a very low-level flunky who apologized for keeping him waiting, then showed him to a room at the back of the building and forgot about him.

  After an hour a second functionary arrived, tut-tutted, and promised to speed him along. He was left in various corridors and offices, then shown along to other corridors and offices. People appeared agitated and desperately busy, but Henry could not see that much actual work was getting done. The afternoon dragged on. As he waited, he chatted with the soldiers and civil servants and found what he had expected: everyone claimed to know what was going on and no one did.

  Henry Mooney was a patient man. Eventually he managed to work his way to Neville Grantham.

  Grantham was sequestered in a tiny cubicle well out of the main traffic area. When he saw the journalist in the doorway he stood up from his desk and rubbed the small of his back with his hands. He was gray with fatigue, and the pouches under his eyes were bloated. “I thought you’d be along sooner or later,” he told Henry. “Did you have any trouble getting in?”

  “I’ve been kept waiting all afternoon.”

  Grantham shook his head. “Typical. I’m sorry, Henry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  “I think so.”

  “Yes. Well. Take a seat, will you?”

  “Do you know what the situation is, Neville? Is there a surrender?”

  “I know some of it. I don’t think anyone will ever know all of it. Is this for the record?”

  “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

  In the light from the window beside his desk, Grantham’s face was somber. “I don’t suppose it matters, Henry. The rebel leaders evacuated the G.P.O. yesterday and retired to Moore Street. Around noon today they sent out a nurse—her name’s Elizabeth O’Farrell, for the record—under a white flag. It was a bloody brave thing for her to do; there’s been a lot of civilians shot. And that’s not for the record.”

  Henry nodded.

  “She was taken to the British command post in Parnell Street,4 where she told the officer in charge that the commander-in-chief of the Irish Republican Army wished to negotiate with the commander of the British forces in Ireland. The officer—a colonel, you don’t need to mention his name—insisted she meant the Sinn Féiners. Miss O’Farrell insisted right back at him that the name was the Irish Republican Army. ‘And a good name it is too!’ she said.”

  Henry suppressed a smile.

  “The colonel detained her until General Lowe arrived. He was very courteous to her, but made it plain that only an unconditional surrender would be accepted. She was to go back and tell Pearse and the others that without one the hostilities would resume in half an hour. General Maxwell was prepared to show no mercy.

  “At about three-thirty Miss O’Farrell accompanied Patrick Pearse to General Lowe in Parnell Street. Pearse formally surrendered his sword, then they took him by motorcar to General Maxwell at Parkgate.”

  “Did Pearse make any statement about his reason for surrendering?” Henry asked, watching Grantham carefully.

  The other hesitated. “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know. I’ve already been told the reason by an unimpeachable source, and I have witnesses. If the government doesn’t make it public, I will.”

  “There’s no need to threaten me, Henry. As a matter of fact, at Parkgate Pearse did write out a statement. I’m not certain we intended to…give me a few minutes, will you?”

  While Grantham was out of the room Henry got up and went to look out the window. The view was of a cobbled courtyard, without a trace of green.

  Grantham eventually returned with a single sheet of paper. “The under-secretary has agreed that we’ll release this ourselves. To show good faith. Formal surrender orders are being printed up for the various rebel command posts, but you can copy this if you like. Just allow the Castle to publish it first.”

  The handwritten statement read:

  In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at Headquarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the Commandants of the various districts in the City and Country will order their commands to lay down arms.

  (Signed) P. H. Pearse

  29th April, 1916

  3:45 p.m5

  ON SATURDAY, Father Paul found himself still prevented from reaching Kilmainham. “We’ll have all this cleared away soon, though,” he was informed by the soldiers at the first roadblock he came to. “We just don’t want to let any of the rebels escape in this direction.”

  Paul turned away, trying to decide what to do while he waited.

  All at once he remembered. By an exhaustive, rambling route that skirted the ruined heart of northside Dublin and avoided a number of British barricades, he at last reached the North Circular Road.

  The matron of the Orphan House for Destitute Females surveyed the priest with an air of frank curiosity. “Months and years can go by without a living soul caring a ha’penny for any of these children,” she said. “Then in the same week—a week when the whole city’s in an uproar—two of you show up wanting the same child.”

  “The same child. Ursula Jervis?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Is she here, then?”

  “She was, but a woman took her away last night. A woman with a pistol,” the matron added as if she still could not quite believe it.

  HENRY did not return to the Independent until long after dark, by which time he was confident he knew as much as any reporter in Dublin. The knowledge did not make him happy.

  Before he even took off his hat he asked about Ned.

  “He’s gone,” someone told him.

  “Gone? Gone where? And how could he—he was hurt!”

  “We kept him here all afternoon; never could get a doctor. Mostly he just slept. After teatime he seemed to come ’round a bit and asked where you were. Then he drifted off again. We figured the best thing was to let him sleep. We were keeping an eye on him; he was quite safe.

  “Next thing we knew, though, he was simply…gone.”

  Henry was dismayed. “How could you let him leave? They’re all being arrested! Pádraic Pearse has been taken to Arbour Hill; James Connolly’s in the military hospital in Dublin Castle. The garrison remaining from the G.P.O.—less than two hundred altogether—marched into Parnell Street and laid down their arms. They’re being held under guard in the grounds of the Rotunda for the night. If Ned tries to rejoin them he’ll get what they get, and it’s not going to be very pleasant.”

  HIS ears were still ringing. His head was still throbbing. But like Joe Plunkett he resolved to hold his consciousness elsewhere, outside his body.

  When he emerged from the alley behind the Carlisle Building, Ned was surprised to find that darkness had fallen. He was in shirtsleeves. No rifle. No pistol. No Sam Browne belt.

  It see
med to take hours to get across the Liffey without attracting attention to himself.

  In one of the laneways he stumbled upon a pub that was still open and took a seat in the corner. He asked no questions, merely listened. Until he knew.

  It was over, then. Heartbreakingly over.

  He wanted to put his aching head down on the table and weep. Instead he made himself get up and walk through the flame-lit night to the Rotunda. He was careful that no one should notice him, dodging from doorway to doorway, melting into shadows. “Och, I have me little ways,” he murmured feverishly once or twice.

  He found the remnant of the post office garrison herded together onto the grassy forecourt of the maternity hospital, within sight of the monument to Charles Stewart Parnell and not fifty yards from Tom Clarke’s shop, which was now being used as an operations center by the British. Unnoticed in the darkness, Ned squirmed along the wall until he came to an angle only a few yards from the prisoners. There he flattened himself against the stone.

  A British officer was flashing lamps in the faces of different men to identify them.6 “I know this bastard. Hullo, Pigface!” When he came to Seán MacDermott he said contemptuously, “I see you have cripples in your army.”7

  MacDermott replied, “You have your place, sir, and I have mine. And you had better mind your place,” he added with bared teeth.

  “How the hell do you expect to fight, beat me over the head with your stick?” The man snatched MacDermott’s cane away from him and laughed when he staggered.

  Meanwhile the officer in charge took some of the prisoners to the foot of the hospital steps and stripped them.8 Poor Tom Clarke, robbed of his clothing and his dignity, stood with his scrawny, shriveled flesh humiliatingly exposed to the women staring down at him from the windows above.

  Michael Collins growled to the man beside him, “We’ll get that fellow’s name. Pass the word.”9

  Ned could stand no more. He stepped forward to draw the attention of the guards.