HER HEART WAS heavy as she left the prison. It was dark, and instead of a bride’s happiness and joy, here she was alone, afraid, and overcome with an immense sadness that she could not dispel.
Father MacCarthy joined her. ‘Mrs Plunkett, I fear that you will not be able to get back across the city with the curfew,’ he said, worried. ‘I will see if I can find you a safe place to stay for the night.’
She nodded dumbly, trying not to give in to the tears that threatened.
They walked along James Street to a nearby convent, but the nuns were all asleep in their beds and offered no assistance.
‘The bellringer, Mr Byrne, lives nearby,’ the priest sighed. ‘Perhaps he can help us.’
The bellringer was surprised to be disturbed at such a late hour, but the priest explained Grace’s situation, that she was the wife of one of the rebels due to be executed. Mr Byrne, nodding in sympathy, kindly welcomed her inside his small, simple home. She had a cup of tea and a slice of soda bread that he insisted she eat before he led her up the narrow stairs to a small, dingy room overlooking the back yard.
Exhausted, she lay on the brass bed with its musty horsehair mattress and pulled the rough blanket over her. She prayed silently for Joe, that God would somehow intervene and that miraculously he would be pardoned, his death sentence commuted, even if he were deported to some far-off prison in the British colonies. Rolling on her side, she longed for sleep as she cried and struggled to contain her grief.
Suddenly she was woken by Mr Byrne standing at the end of the bed, telling her she must get up immediately as a motor vehicle had been sent from the prison to collect her and bring her to see Mr Plunkett. In a moment she was dressed and slipping her shoes back on, then quickly using the outside lavatory, brushing her hair and dabbing some cologne on her wrists and neck as she thanked Mr Byrne for his hospitality to her.
The driver, a policeman, refused to be drawn about the reason for her visit as they passed through the empty streets and once again Grace found herself inside Kilmainham’s high walls.
It was the middle of the night, two o’clock, and it was hushed and quiet, the prisoners sleeping in their cells. She wondered if her sister slept too, unaware of her presence and her marriage to Joe.
She was brought again to the governor’s office, where one of the guards informed her that, as Mr Plunkett’s next-of-kin, his wife, she was permitted to visit him in his cell prior to his execution. Major Lennon had given permission for her to say goodbye to her husband.
She stood there not trusting herself to speak, her eyes drawn to a letter left lying on the governor’s desk addressed to Mrs Pearse from Padraig. Grace was briefly tempted to steal it to give to his poor mother.
‘This way,’ said the soldier, leading her through the cold, damp prison corridors.
Nervous, she shivered and touched her new wedding band as she followed him. The light was poor and she had to concentrate so that she did not trip or stumble.
Eventually they stopped and the door to a small, narrow, dark cell was opened. In the gloom she could see Joe, sitting with a blanket around him on a plank of wood which served as a bed on the floor, with only a bench, a bowl and a cup. He looked up, surprised, and in that instant she could see the love for her in his eyes. She longed to fling herself into his arms and caress and hold him, but the cell was crowded as soldiers crammed in behind her. Some carried bayonets and one pointedly held a watch.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said firmly.
Grace’s heart pounded alarmingly and she could feel the trembling in her leg and foot. Her hands began to shake too as fear of what lay ahead for Joe almost engulfed her.
He stood up. He looked pale and the bandage around his neck was filthy, but his eyes reassured her as he reached for her hands and stilled the tremors. He was so calm and even in these last minutes she knew that Joe cared deeply for her, never thinking about himself but worried for her, wanting still to protect and love her for as long as he lived. She knew if she spoke she would break down, perhaps even turn to attack the soldiers around her like a wildcat, so she sat down beside him, trying to gather her thoughts and emotions.
‘Darling Grace, you must be brave,’ coaxed Joe, unselfish as ever. ‘You are my wife now and I promise that you will be cared for always.’
A heavy tear slid down her face.
She listened as he spoke quietly of his friends and his belief in a new republic, a new Ireland. Their fight for freedom, the Rising, was only the beginning.
Joe had his faith and told her that he wasn’t afraid to die.
‘I am happy, dying for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.’
She squeezed his hand, feeling the familiar pressure of his thumb caressing and circling her palm. There was so much she wanted to say, to tell him, but she knew if she even began to speak, a torrent of words and tears would pour from her, like a river bursting through a dam, and that she would not be able to control it or hold it back.
‘Your ten minutes are up,’ declared the sergeant.
Grace could not believe that ten minutes had passed and they had barely said anything to each other. They needed more time, needed privacy. But there was none. Joe nodded at her quietly and they held each other’s gaze for those last few seconds as the sergeant ordered her to leave.
A moment or two later Grace was being escorted from the cell and back out through the prison. The memory of Joe’s eyes, the touch of his hands, his words and his immense courage were seared in her heart.
Somewhere a prisoner screamed, like a child having a nightmare. Voices shouted, telling him gruffly to go back to sleep.
Grace stopped, feeling weak, barely able to breathe or move. A young soldier offered to get her some water. She leaned against the wall and sipped at it slowly, thinking of Joe alone in his cell.
The soldier confided to her that, along with Joe, three other prisoners were to be executed before dawn. One of them, she discovered, was Willie Pearse, and she let out a gasp at the mention of his name. She thought of Willie, with his art and sculpture and devotion to his older brother. When she was only seventeen he’d twirled her around the dance floor at college socials.
It was still dark when she walked out through the heavy prison door. Flecks of light peeped through the darkness and she could hear birdsong in the early hours of that still May morning.
She could not return home and it was unfair to go back to Mr Byrne’s home and waken him once more. Father MacCarthy hoped to organize somewhere else for her to stay, or a motor vehicle to drive her to her sister Kate’s home.
Grace stood waiting near the prison wall, a shiver running through her, for she felt such a strange coldness surrounding her. She wanted to stay: she still harboured a forlorn hope that perhaps there would be some last-minute reprieve, a change of mind about Joe’s sentence. Grace still had hope.
Suddenly in the creeping morning light she heard rapid gunshots. Was it a firing squad? Fear gripped her. Once again there came the sound of gunfire. Shot after shot in the silence. Then more yet again.
Was it Joe?
She breathed slowly, then the stillness was broken by another booming volley, so loud and clear, breaking the calm of that early morn. A few seconds later, a single shot.
Grace’s mind was filled with the image of Joe and the firing squad, and she knew instantly in her heart that this time it was him. She doubled over in pain at the realization that she would never see or speak or touch Joe again in this lifetime.
She stood there transfixed. It was over. Finally over. Joe was dead – shot like his friends MacDonagh, and Padraig and Willie and brave Tom Clarke. The rebellion crushed. His life taken from him because he had dared to dream, dared to fight for a new republic, an independent, free Ireland.
Mother had said they were fools, traitors, disloyal to the crown. A strange weariness came over Grace. How could she ever return to her childhood home again? She had nowhere to go now that Joe was dead. He had told her to be brave, but she was not like him …
The sky was getting lighter, brighter, the dawn with its first faint streaks of sunlight breaking the darkness. She looked upwards, thinking of Joe on the other side of the high wall only a few seconds ago.
Then she saw it – a bird, flapping its wings, its long neck and head and beak stretched forwards, rising upwards and upwards across the new morning sky. She watched it, looking up at the sky, dizzy, the bird flying free above her, soaring high over the city.
It wasn’t over. Joe was right. It wasn’t over at all.
This was just the beginning …