4

Father Devine made his report the next day immediately upon his return. He tugged continually at the folds in his soutane, and his eyes darted around the small room at Con Davitt, in whose cottage they were meeting, at Peadar Kelley, Richard Morrissey, Colman Brady, John Moran, Jack McClusky, Will McCauley, his brother Tom, Francis X. Landers and Terence Murphy.

“I met with Barry himself and with Riordan,” the priest said. Tom Barry was commander of the Cork Flying Brigade. Sean Riordan was executive officer to General Collins himself. “And they said Purcival’s coming here was providential.”

“For Purcival or for us?” Moran said.

“Let him talk, John,” Landers said.

“For Ireland,” the priest replied firmly. “They said they’ve been waiting for just such a turn as this. The Volunteers have been laying back for an opportunity to hit the Brits in force, and they think this is it.”

“They’re coming here?” Jack McClusky asked. There was relief in his voice, the hope that the IRA would defend the village.

“No,” Father Devine said, “they plan to attack the Barracks in Clonmel while Purcival is up here. I’m afraid the first volley is ours.”

“We hit Purcival,” Colman Brady said, “and they hit the Barracks. Then what?”

“Then the Brits in Cork move to Clonmel to reinforce, and they hit them. Collins himself will lead the attack on the Cork Division.”

“How do you know that?” Brady asked.

“I talked to him.”

“What, to Collins?”

“Yes. On the telephone. Barry rang him up in Dublin. General Collins devised the plan.” The priest stopped. The men were as impressed to hear it as he was to say it. “He told me that all Ireland was looking to Four Mile Water. He told me to tell you that we—the men of this village—have his admiration and his esteem.”

Francis Landers exhaled audibly. The sound expressed the feelings of the group. They were amazed and flattered. For a moment no one spoke.

Then Colman Brady said, “Admiration and esteem aren’t what we were asking for, Father.”

“I know, Colman. I told him. I told him we wouldn’t make a move without the assurance of support.”

“Well?”

“He gave me his oath. General Collins gave me his oath.” The priest paused to let the weight of that settle. “He said the British would be too busy defending their camps in Clonmel and Cork to give a further thought to us. We’d be off the hook.”

“All we have to do is take on that Purcival?” McCauley said. His voice snapped with hatred, and the men remembered his home in flames.

There was another silence.

“We’d be choked,” Landers said at last.

“Not if Tom Barry was here and his boys,” Morrissey said.

“Barry won’t come up till after the ambush,” the priest explained again. “The first row needs be ours. The Volunteers will cover us in Clonmel.”

“What about weapons?” Moran asked.

“You’d be on your own,” Father Devine explained. “Half the IRA uses broom handles for guns.”

“I’ve a shotgun,” Peadar Kelley put in, “and so do half a dozen other fellows.”

“Shotguns are useless past ten yards,” Moran said. Contempt, despair, fear could be heard in what he said.

“So,” Colman Brady said, pausing, harvesting their attention, “we’d have to get that close to them.”

“Are you in favor of it, Colman?”

“I think we could stop them. Once.”

“Riordan and Barry say that’s all they’d need.”

“And then the bastards would leave us alone,” Moran said, nodding. There were murmurs, approving and hopeful.

Colman Brady was sucking on his blackthorn pipe. He took it from between his teeth and exhaled a cloud and turned to the old man in the chair next to him. “What do you think, Con?”

“I wish your Pa was here, Colman. He’d know what to do . . .”

Con Davitt had been one of the leaders of the land reform movement at the turn of the century. He had had his taste of victory over the English. He had been the chairman of the vigilance committee for years.

“But I reckon . . .” His voice went flat. “You’ll have to do for yourselves.”

Several men dropped their eyes. Davitt himself turned his attention to the small fire at his feet. The turf logs were burning smartly.

Colman touched him. “It’s all of us together in this, Con,” he said quietly, “or no one.”

“I’m afeard of them, Colman.” The old eyes brimmed. A line of spittle fell down his chin.

“Good!” Colman said boldly. “We all should be afraid of them. It’s harps against the Empire. Any man who is not sick to his heels with fear right now is of no use to us.”

“If I was you,” Davitt said, “I’d go to the States or Australia. If I was young.”

“Would my pa go, too?”

“No. Your pa . . .”—Con looked up at Colman fiercely—“. . . would make them work for it!”

Colman nodded.

“He’d hit them before they got here Wednesday!”

Colman nodded.

Con Davitt looked around the room. It was hushed. No one had yet ventured to describe what they might actually do.

“He’d hit them on the road someplace!”

“We’d need a good plan,” Francis Landers said.

“We’d need to organize ourselves better, I think,” John Moran said. He was a large red-bearded man and he spoke with authority.

Father Devine nodded. “Tom Barry said we should have an elected leader.”

“Who’ll it be?” Moran asked. “No offense to you, Con.”

Con Davitt smiled and some of the men laughed nervously.

No one spoke.

It seemed to some that Moran himself was waiting to be nominated. But no one looked at him. He was a man you could trust to drink too much. When he drank too much he turned moist and soft as kidney pie.

“It should be Colman Brady,” the priest said.

“Aye,” Dick Morrissey put in instantly. He’d been about to say so himself.

The men looked at Colman.

Colman shook his head. “You wouldn’t want it the way I’d have it. The only way.”

“How’s that?”

“Absolutely. This committee would be disbanded. I would devise the plan and make assignments as I saw fit. No one would participate who was unwilling to submit to me in everything having to do with the defense of Four Mile Water. Anyone who agreed to participate under this condition and who then disobeyed during the course of the action—I would kill him.”

Colman paused, waiting for a shudder to come over him. Even as he spoke with crisp, sure authority, the words shocked him. He had no idea where they had come from, but he knew that they were absolutely necessary and exactly right. He did not shudder.

“That’s a harsh way to put it, Brady,” Moran said.

“It’s harsh business.”

“We should keep the committee,” Francis Landers said.

“You think the Brits run it by committee?” Colman asked.

The men were silent. The inexorable logic of Brady’s proposal sank in on them.

“You feel up to it, Colman?” Moran was obviously looking for an opening for himself.

“‘Up to it’?”

“You might be . . . a bit young . . . for the others.”

“I don’t relish the job. Indeed, I don’t want it. I’m simply willing to go by the judgment of this group. But if it is me, this group must then go by mine.”

“Or you’ll kill us.”

“In point of fact, John, it won’t matter whether I do it or the Brits do it.”

“Colman’s right,” Peadar Kelley said. “If we can’t match them in discipline, we can’t match them.”

The group was silent again.

“So?” Colman said at last.

“Yes,” Peadar said.

Several men nodded.

“I say yes.”

“Aye,” said John Moran.

Relief crossed the group like wind grain.

“Yes, Colman,” the priest said, settling it.

“Alright, Peadar, you have your pencil?”

“Yes.”

“Make a list. These men, as well as Tom Gallagher, Joseph Sheehan, O’Brien, Malloy, your cousin Teo, Manning, and Ed Donovan.”

“Eddy?”

“No. His pa. Eddy’s a boy. But we could use his Sam Browne.”

Some thought Brady was joking, and they laughed.

“You can’t exempt the boys,” Moran said. He had three adolescent sons himself and thought they would serve well.

“No exemptions, John. There’ll be something for the lads. But the heart of it is ours, and the men I’ve named. For now speak to no one else.”

“What about Peter Gavin?”

“No. Gavin will be with the lads, if at all.” Colman remembered their exchange the day before and added, wanting the men to understand it was not personal, “Gavin is even more of a lush than . . . Father Devine.”

The men roared with laughter and the priest blushed furiously.

When the laughter subsided, the tension was tangibly lessened.

“Walter Lyons will want in, Colman,” Con Davitt said.

“He’s too old, Con. He’s seventy-four.”

“He’s a better man still than half you named, Brady! He was worthy of your pa’s respect. He’s worthy of yours!” Con checked himself and lowered his voice. “Besides . . . he’s younger than me . . . and I want in.”

The function of the silence was clear; Davitt was waiting for Brady to accept him.

“Alright, Con. That’s it. Who can get Will Reilley’s shotgun?”

A man raised his hand.

“And Burke’s?”

Another.

“And Dougal’s?”

And a third.

“Alright. We’ll meet on Sander’s Hill at sunset. We’ve two days to become what we aren’t and don’t want to be and must for God’s sake become. Now if you’ll all stand, perhaps Father Devine would be good enough to lead us in making our vow of strict silence . . . and yours of obedience.”

Nearly sixty hours later, shortly after one o’clock Wednesday morning, Major Purcival was reading the intelligence report on Four Mile Water. The village had been totally vacated by sunset the day before. His spotters had observed the two-day trickle of herds and wagons down from the hill into the valley. Most of the people had put up with farm neighbors in the parish of Ballymacarberry. Some had gone as far away as Dungarvan, and a few had been taken in by citizens of Clonmel. The priest was reported to be en route to the bishop’s house in Kilkenny. The potential troublemakers, McCauley and Brady, were both reported to have transferred their livestock across the Nire at the Mission Ford.

Just as Purcival had anticipated, the operation was proceeding in order. He knew the routine well, having supervised the evacuation of eleven comparable villages in Flanders and Normandy. The methodical, exact procedures of the military code always accomplished their purpose if carried out with firmness. The random terror of Black and Tan hooligans stiffened resistance. Proper operations with a precise but deadly minimum of force preempted it. The regular military would not only be more humane in putting down Irish rebellion, but more effective.

Major Purcival decided to alter procedure to a minor extent.

Since the rush of pleasure that came with command-in-action would not subside that night, he decided to lead the occupying party up to Four Mile Water himself. Ordinarily the brigade lieutenant would do so, but he would indulge his restlessness this once, even though the operation would be uneventful.

Purcival decided to try to sleep again. He switched off the light in his office and returned to his quarters. An hour or two was all he needed.

Meanwhile, Colman Brady’s breathing was steady and slow, but Nellie knew he wasn’t asleep. Her ear was against his breast just above his heart. She could hear it beating out of pace with itself. They were lying together on a bed of hay in the loft of Tomas Macken’s barn. It had been after midnight when Colman had finally arrived. She hadn’t seen him since they had left Four Mile Water by separate roads Monday afternoon after he had returned from Con Davitt’s place. She knew without his telling her what he had been doing, but she felt her first great disappointment in him that he had not confided in her. She knew he would be leaving her again before dawn. She didn’t know what else to do than hold him with all her strength.

Colman’s mind would not stop. He knew he needed sleep, and he was trying to force it to come. He had not slept in two nights, but the images kept flashing before him. He saw the road again, the place just south of the bridge over the Nire. It was eerie country, where the heather grew sparsely in bogland that sloped down to the river. The only cover was provided by outcrops of gaunt rock. At a distance there was a low ridge marking the boundaries of the area. He wondered for the hundredth time if he had chosen the right place. He saw the faces of the men looking strained and frightened as he pushed them through the drill for the tenth time. Everything hinged on timing: on the gate falling at exactly the moment, on each man knowing his part and sticking to it.

But no; everything hinged now on fortune, on the Brits halting at the precise spot, on there being only two lorries full, on their surprise, on their loss if only for an instant of composure and poise. Colman had lied to the men, telling them the troops were green, boys, easy to scare off. He had lied, saying the plan could not fail, no one would die. But now he found it impossible to lie to himself. The plan was more reckless than bold, more desperate than daring. It was insane; a few farmers, old men, shepherds with bird guns, shovels, axes, and blackthorn sticks taking on veteran soldiers. It was insane; their leader a terrified newlywed whose meager knowledge of the tactics of ambush derived from rabbit hunting—a little bait, a big trap, swiftness was all. Brady saw the face of Major Purcival, a battle-hardened, certain, decisive officer who knew exactly what to expect from the worthiest military foe. But Colman’s every instinct told him that was the British weak point, the Irish hope. A few jittery farmers in backwash country couldn’t have been less military, less worthy. Purcival knew they would have to be insane to defy him, senseless to attack him. And that, Colman assured himself for the thousandth time, was why the plan was so sane, so sensible.

“Colman?”

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

Nellie Brady knew that if she was to be the perfect Irish wife she would never ask questions of her man directly, never voice her doubts openly. But she did not want to go so easily into resentment. She did not want the silence between them to become a weapon.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“What’s to be gained?”

“What’s to be lost if you don’t.”

“It’s better you not know.”

“It’s better you tell me facts, Colman. Otherwise I’m a victim of my dreams. I’m thinking the worst.”

“The worst is true.”

“You’re going soon, aren’t you?”

“We meet at four.”

“How many?”

“All the men.”

“And Patty also?” The only two men she loved, her husband and her brother.

“Yes. And Conor.”

The image of the eerie place on the road flashed before him then and he saw dozens of boys and old men standing on the ridge and on the gaunt outcroppings of rock, each holding a stick made to look like a rifle, each back from the road far enough not to be seen closely, far enough to have a chance if things went wrong.

Nellie tightened her hold on Colman. Her heart was matching his in pounding.

Neither spoke again until she said, “I saw the gun.”

He stiffened. “You opened my sack.”

“Yes. Where did you get it?”

“It was wrapped in the tunic of Jim’s uniform with his helmet; souvenirs that came home with his corpse from France.”

Nellie had never heard him speak with such subdued bitterness. It was more like him to rant. His tight, suppressed emotion frightened her. He was coiled like rope, like wire.

“There were no bullets,” he said, “but for the one in his heart, of course.”

“Oh, God, Colman,” she cried into his breast, “I hate it.”

“You shouldn’t have looked in my sack.”

“You were telling me nothing.”

“Now you’ve pecked it out of me, are you pleased?”

“I still don’t understand. You can’t possibly think . . .”

“Do you think I’ve coal for brains? The main assault will be in Clonmel. An IRA attack. We’re just picking off the scouts.” When he put it that way, it didn’t seem so insane. Don’t make it worse than it is! “By noon, it’ll all be over. I’ll come back here for you and Bea and we’ll be home by night.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Would I lie to an Irish faerie?” He pressed her, hoping to dispel her mood.

“No. But you wouldn’t take one into account if she wasn’t of interest to you at the moment. It’s as if we never married.”

“I did not arrange this circumstance, woman!”

“But you chose right enough what’s important to you.”

Colman shot up out of the straw. The hole he left in it swallowed Nell up so that he couldn’t see her.

“I chose none of it!” He hissed at her. “It chose me!” He clawed the straw away from her and grabbed her high on the shoulders, near the neck, and shook her, swallowed himself by anger.

“Choke me, you bastard! Choke me!” she urged.

He slapped her face.

They both froze. It was his first blow against her. She eyed him coldly. She had been through this before, if not with him. Her first large step toward that infinity of passive wifely scorn had not been so difficult to take, after all.

“Nell, I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Aren’t you.”

He rolled back down into the straw beside her. They lay still, not touching, each waiting for the other to sleep. Then it was time for him to go. Her eyes were closed and she was not moving. Her breathing was steady. He left quietly, gratefully pretending that her pretense at sleep had fooled him.

So that day began with two acts of counterfeit. There would be more.

One occurred shortly after dawn. The last thing Purcival expected to see on the road was one of his own men. As his open car came around the first bend south of the Nire, he saw a private soldier, not an RIC Auxiliary, but an honest-to-God Tommy with a trench helmet and regular army tunic and Sam Browne belt. The major ordered his driver to slow down as they approached the uniformed figure. He stood in the road just past a gate that was overgrown with heather. Purcival was alert, squinting at the man intently through the haze of first light. The sun had not broken through the mists of daybreak. It was the sort of sight one had learned to expect in France as straggling, fleeing, or misplaced soldiers had dotted the roads throughout the campaign.

But this was Ireland.

It was like an apparition.

Purcival unsnapped his holster and let his hand rest on the butt of his pistol as the Lancia touring car came to a halt by the soldier. The Tommy had a cigarette between his teeth and was slouching with his hands hooked loosely behind his back. No bearing. No pride. He reminded Purcival of all the deserters he had shot.

“Good day, sir,” the soldier said, not removing the cigarette, not saluting, stepping toward the car.

The first lorry was screeching to a halt directly behind and the sound of it set off the alarm in Purcival’s mind: don’t let the convoy stop! But before the major could order the driver, and even before he could draw his pistol, the man wearing the army tunic was on the running board and the snout of a German Luger was pressing against the flesh of Purcival’s left cheek.

“Move and you’re dead!”

Purcival froze.

The driver froze.

As the man reached across him to take his pistol from its holster, the major saw the insigne of the Irish Guard on the breast pocket of the tunic, and below it a Flanders ribbon and below that a bullet hole. He saw that the man’s helmet was rusted and knew it for the war souvenir it was. Then he saw that the man’s face was familiar. It was the farmer, the groom, Brady.

The lieutenant in the first lorry had seen what was happening, and he blew his whistle furiously. The ten soldiers in the truck flung back the canvas flaps and began leaping over the slatted sides. As they did so, the timber gate overgrown with heather five yards directly behind the lorry crashed to the ground. Two ranks of men, four kneeling in front, five standing immediately arear, pulled the triggers on their shotguns, and the blast slammed the leaping soldiers back against the truck. From the opposite side of the road half a dozen men armed with pitchforks and axes swarmed around the lorry, hacking at the soldiers, seizing their rifles and hurling them into the ditches.

The second lorry had come only a little way around the first bend before it had stopped. The Auxies leaped out, led by their officer, and sprawled on the ground, firing away. By then several of the attackers began to return their fire, using the soldiers’ own weapons. Brady’s shotgun section, each of whom had carried his second shell between his teeth, was reloading and firing toward the second lorry one at a time, according to the plan. The noise of the shooting was such that it was impossible to tell from the road that the dozens of figures who then appeared on the rocks and the ridge beyond were aiming sticks, not rifles.

Colman Brady had the major’s own pistol against his cheekbone now.

“Surrender!” he screamed. “Surrender!”

“Yes,” Purcival said, terrified. “We surrender!”

Purcival stood, pulling himself up at Brady’s direction, turned back toward the awful scene and blew his whistle sharply three times, the signal for cease-fire. The gunshots died down, and all was silence except for the terrible moaning of the wounded. Everyone was crouched, seeking what cover he could find. Only Brady and Major Purcival remained exposed.

“Tell them!” Brady hissed.

“We surrender!” the major yelled.

Some of the Auxiliaries threw away their rifles. The section of four men, carrying shotguns, who had been drilled to do so, began moving among the sprawling soldiers, hurling their weapons to the others in the ditches.

Colman saw a figure coming down from the ridge, running in a crouch. At first he felt fury that anyone from that section should approach the road. Then, when he saw it was Eddy Donovan, he felt panic.

“Eddy! No!” he ordered.

But the boy ran onto the road. One of the soldiers who had hurled away his rifle raised his revolver and aimed at Eddy. Colman tried to get off a shot with his own gun, but it was too late. Eddy’s face was red and destroyed, and the firing began again. Two of Brady’s men fell in the road. One of them, he saw, was Patty Deasy.

Major Purcival seized the rifle that lay between the driver and the shift handle, but before he could aim, Brady had turned back. He shot the officer through the forehead with his own pistol and then the driver through the trunk of his body.

“Fire! Fire!” he yelled, furious.

The men stood firing the weapons they had seized until they advanced to within ten yards of the Auxiliaries.

“There are no good shots or bad at ten yards,” Brady had told them repeatedly. It was so.

The enemy, most of whom were mercilessly exposed as they sprawled on the open road, began to shout again, “We surrender!”

Brady saw them writhing with their hands outstretched toward him. The soldiers cried, “We surrender, we surrender!” and were pleading with their eyes. They were pleading with him. That was what seized Brady. They were beseeching him, waiting for his mercy, his compassion, his restraint. But he had none to give them. An omnipotent fury unleashed itself as if from another man’s breast, not his. Colman Brady shouted, “Keep firing on them! Keep firing, Number Two Section! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

And the boys did.

Brady’s command triggered a spasm of killing. He watched the bodies of the Tommies jump with the force of bullets from their own weapons.

“Fire!” he yelled, the fever of it on him. The British Empire was at his feet and he had nothing for it but an appalling and—to him—startling act of punishment. He would never be the same and he had the mad feeling that neither would Britannia. Finally there was no movement from the Auxiliaries, and Brady at last called, “Cease-fire!”

There was an uncanny silence as the sound of the last shot died away. No one was moaning.

Colman ran the short distance to where he had seen his men fall. Con Davitt lay in his own blood, dead. Patty Deasy was next to him, also dead. In the ditch, Richard Morrissey lay, eyes open, mouth agape, face as though fixed on the low clouds. He was dead. Farther down the road, Eddy Donovan’s body was tangled with the bodies of several Brits.

“Section One!” Brady shouted. “By the drill!” The men who’d borne the shotguns began rapidly collecting the arms of the dead soldiers.

“Section Two!” he ordered, and two teams of four men began dousing the lorries with paraffin to make them ready for burning. The men had been standing amid the carnage dazed, too shocked to move. They responded to Brady’s orders gratefully, as if released from a trance.

Old Walter Lyons approached the body of Con Davitt and he began to weep audibly.

Colman put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. He couldn’t allow this open expression of grief, not then. “Walt,” he said softly, “do you feel up to going for the priest?”

“Yes, Colman, yes.” Lyons straightened himself and stumbled off as quickly as he could toward Sander’s Hill.

By then the ridge section with their painted sticks had moved timidly down to the road. Some of them walked as if asleep, hypnotized by what they saw. The strain was too much for one lad, who ran off screaming. Ed Donovan was on his knees, trying to free his son’s body from the English corpses it was entangled with. He let out a loud screeching wail when he saw the red pulp where Eddy’s face had been. He crushed his son against his chest, groaning loudly, rocking with grief. His collapse set off several others. Boys and men were weeping openly.

“Form your lines!” Brady barked. He would not allow them to crack. He learned instantly the military lesson; he could not allow them to feel the horror of what they had done. They would go mad. He had to make them feel the order of it, the rightness of it. He would offer them the refuge of discipline. He took for himself the refuge of power.

“Form your lines!”

The men fell into three columns. Brady hauled Ed Donovan away from his son’s body. He ran up to Peadar Kelley, who was weeping uncontrollably, and slapped him fiercely.

“Your line, Kelley!”

Peadar moved dumbly into his section.

“Count off!”

The men began reciting their numbers, but Brady yelled, “Louder!” and they began again. When they came to the dead men’s numbers, Brady called them out himself so that the rhythm wouldn’t break.

When the counting was finished Colman harshly reprimanded the men, stalking about, ordering them to correct their posture and straighten their lines. Then he commenced to drill them, forcing them to march up and down the road.

The lorries were now ablaze. Like two huge torches they lit up the dull countryside and the corpse-strewn bloody road. The sun had not broken through the gray mist and the night seemed to linger.

Colman Brady could not look at the men as he marched them up and down endlessly, waiting for the discipline to grip. Conor was among them, but Colman showed no sign that he was his brother, who, for his part, marched the drill sternly, not seeking out Colman’s eyes, not wanting to see what was there.