Clonmacnoise belongs to Offaly, a midland county in the flat peaty

plain at Ireland’s heart. Offaly’s name has no connection to the inner organs of beasts and fowls, to lamb’s kidneys or chicken livers. It comes from the Irish kingship who once governed it, the O’Connor-Faly family. So Robert heard on the night that he arrived.

He heard further that the name of Clonmacnoise has two roots. Clon comes from cluan, the Gaelic word for meadow; mac means son, and there must have been a man called Nós who had a son who owned a meadow. Thus, the meadow of the son of Nós: Clon … mac … noise.

In Ireland, the man who gave Robert this linguistic information used to be called “a strong farmer,” meaning that he produced all his needs on his own farm. His name was Laurence Mullen, he had a wife named Lena, and they had seven children, four boys and three girls.

The Mullens belonged to the Sevovicz network, as had the old man and his boatmaking; the carter with the thatched head; Mr. Reddan and his calf by the fireside and his brother, Father Reddan, the priest in Lorrha; the nuns in Portroe; and the half-blind postman who’d lent Robert a bicycle. They were all watchers in that easy casual network, and all of them loved that they’d been charged with Robert’s care.

In 1922, such connections could be made comfortably in Ireland. The contrary seemed the case: poor roads, no straightforward railway system, and little mass media other than the daily newspapers, not all of which reached all parts of the country all the time. But in Ireland word of mouth connects— the smoke signals of chatter, the drums of gossip. And they all told each other that they’d been asked to look out for this wandering Yank. Long before Robert got there, they felt they already knew him.

Laurence Mullen almost betrayed the network. As he greeted Robert he said, “We’ve been expect—” but his wife, Lena, cut in. “We’re always expecting travelers to the abbey, Father. Especially this time of the year.”

Robert had landed in an uncommon household, an educated farm. Most Irish farmers of the time quit school at fourteen. The Mullens hadn’t been farmers. They came from Dublin, where both had gone to secondary school and college. Both had then worked in the Civil Service, until Lena inherited this—very prosperous—farm from her unmarried uncle. They told all this to Robert as though he understood every nuance.

Thus far they loved every moment of farming— so they said. Both, though, confessed to missing what they called “informed conversation.” Consequently, they loved visitors. “Stay as long as you like,” they told Robert.

He didn’t stay long. And they felt nothing but relief when he left— to their very considerable discredit. It measured Robert’s progress that when he arrived in their house he knew he mightn’t stay long, because he caught a slight whiff of— appropriate— fear.

Excited by their visitor, the war hero, the Mullens shone with bonhomie and goodwill. They brought him into the parlor, the best room in the house, and filled him with cold chicken and hot soda bread, ancient legends and lore.

Halfway through the meal, a child came into the parlor to whisper, “There’s two fellows outside.” Almost as though the light had dimmed, the good mood changed. Lena raised a fierce eyebrow; Laurence left the room and didn’t return. In his absence, Lena talked a little faster.

Robert stayed the night, unknowing, uneasy, vaguely alert. By now he had developed a better grasp of the world. He was asking admittedly basic questions about where he was and what lay ahead. That was how he learned the derivation of the name Offaly and about the monastic ruins.

Laurence quoted: “In a quiet watered land, a land of roses. Stands Saint Kieran’s city fair.”

Lena said, “It was a huge place. All those abbeys were like small towns.”

They told him the history. It was founded by a Roscommon man, Kieran, whose name means son of a carpenter. Kieran became a priest and went on a pilgrimage out to the west to the famous monk Enda.

“While he was there,” said Lena, “Saint Enda and Saint Kieran had the same identical dream.”

Laurence said, “In the dream they both saw a big tree with tons of fruit. It grew right in the heart of Ireland, beside a wide river, and its branches spread out over the whole country.”

Lena chimed in: “And they dreamed that birds came and took the fruit, and they flew with it all over the world.”

Laurence’s turn: “When Kieran and Enda compared dreams, Enda said, ‘Kieran, you’re the tree, and the fruit is the word of God.’ “

Lena added, “And Enda said to him, ‘You’ve to find the right place, on the bank of a great river— you’ll know it when you see it— and you have to build a monastery there where you can teach and ordain priests who’ll spread the word of God across the world.’ Kieran left Enda and traveled back to the mainland here.”

And Laurence said, “He came in at Loop Head in Clare, and he stopped first at Scattery Island, which you must have seen, Robert, when you came in; it’s a big island in the mouth of the Shannon. Another famous monk, Saint Senan, who lived there, showed Kieran how to build a monastery. After that, Kieran traveled on up the Shannon, much as you’re doing, Robert, until he found this place and started his abbey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll go back to America and do the same.”

Then came the knock on the door, the child’s whispered message, and the chill wind blowing through the room.

Next morning Robert ate something he had never seen before. Amid the gleaming ham and eggs lay “black pudding,” a dense, spicy blood sausage as thick as his wrist. The younger children sat and watched every bite go into his mouth. When he looked at any of them, they giggled.

In the yard after breakfast all seven children waited for him. As though he were the Pied Piper, they walked and danced down to the ruins with him. They showed him the two great crosses, north and south; they pointed out the graves of kings. The stone arch, they said, brought luck to any boy and girl who kissed beneath it— huge giggles. And here was the cathedral—”Wrecked by the English; they wrecked everything”—at which Robert smiled.

The oldest of the children, Raymond, a boy of seventeen, said it was wrecked long before that. He showed Robert the place on the river’s bank where the Viking landed in their longboats “and attacked the monks with big shiny hatchets. And if it wasn’t them attacking, it was the local chieftains rustling the monastery cattle.”

“And anyway,” said one of his sisters, “they all had the plague.”

“Their skin went yellow,” said another child.

The younger ones ran shrieking, playing hide-and-seek. Robert gave himself up to the power of the children, sat on a ruined wall, and watched them play The rain that everybody had warned against stayed away.

Back in the farmhouse, Lena announced that, after all, they would be “at the hay” later in the day, when the ground had dried out a bit under the sun. After lunch—another huge meal, pork and cabbage and potatoes— Robert murmured that he’d like to rest. In the quiet afternoon he had the soundest, healthiest sleep that he’d known since the exhaustion of France. The Mullens had given him a room in the new part of the house, the building of which had yet to be completed. Raymond, the oldest boy also slept there. A third room seemed empty.

Robert awoke refreshed and sharp. Not a sound could be heard, not a bird, not a breeze. Downstairs he almost knocked over a motorbike he hadn’t seen before. Nobody answered when he called through the front door, no dogs came wagging out to meet him; when he saw nobody he assumed they were all in the hayfield. Not knowing where to find them, he walked down to the abbey.

Inside, he strolled here and there. He had no system and no defined purpose. If he was looking for something, he didn’t know what it was. He found stillness. His legs swished against the long grass. A bird skimmed low over the river. The shadows of the ruins, the shapes of the two great crosses, the peak of the old monastery wall, the long low mounds of the graves and their dignified headstones— all spoke the word sacred, a word absent from his vocabulary since Belleau Wood.

He leaned against one of the towers. The Mullens had told him that stone had replaced the original wooden buildings. Robert stayed until the tower grew cold and uncomfortable against his back. For the first time in some weeks he reached consciously for the archbishop’s words, the two sentences: Find your soul and you’ll live. Lose your soul and you’ll die. By these, by the prominence of one over the other, he would be able to judge— the archbishop had said— which direction his spirit wanted to take: Here, this afternoon, it’s “Find your soul and you’ll live.”

But other than that no prayer came, no presence of the God he’d once thought he knew. Nor, as the archbishop wanted him to do, did he reach for theology, for the learning he had so avidly embraced in seminary. He had no interest in reaching for it. And yet— and yet: This is a holy place. I know this is a holy place. I can sense it, I can see it, but I can’t feel it. I wonder if they had a monk here by the name of Shannon?

Back at the house, still silent and empty, Robert went in by the separate door to the wing with the extra bedrooms— and found his life in peril. As he climbed the stairs and reached his room, another door opened. Two young men stood there. They looked at Robert and one said, “Who are you?”

Robert said nothing.

“Are you staying here too?” asked the nearer young man.

“Yes.”

The young men walked across the landing and followed Robert into his room. They closed the door.

“Whose man are you?”

Robert looked puzzled.

Without warning the second young man pounced forward and took Robert by the throat.

“This is him, this is him, Jimmy. I know this is him.”

Jimmy drew a handgun and put it hard under Robert’s nose, hurting fiercely. He drew back the safety.

“You bastard. You double-crossing bastard. Who told you?”

Had a star exploded? Robert’s body took over; he began to wet himself. All speech failed. He tried to shake his head but the gun pressed harder.

“Take away the gun. I’ll do it with my hands,” said the first young man, elbowing Jimmy and the gun aside. He moved squarely in front of Robert, slammed him up against the wall, and tightened his hands on Robert’s neck. His thumbs pressed on the windpipe. He spat in Robert’s face and tightened his grip further. Robert felt the hard fingertips and began to see color bursts. The grip cut deeper.

Jimmy came in again with the gun. He pressed it hard into the middle of Robert’s forehead.

“This is the way to do it,” said Jimmy.

“Too much noise,” said the strangler, panting at his own effort. Robert scarcely moved.

“Then finish it, for Jayzes’ sake,” said Jimmy, and the grip tightened again. Robert’s vision began to dance— and fade. His eyelids began to droop. His nose stung from trying to breathe.

Footsteps, on the staircase! A voice called, a young voice: “Father, we’re all at the hay. Are you coming out?”

Raymond had been sent to find him.

Robert began to sink. The strangler had a hard time keeping his tall victim upright.

“Father?” whispered Jimmy. “What the Jayzes is that about?”

“D’you want to come and look, Father?” called Raymond again. “There’s tea in the meadow.”

Said the strangler. “God! Is he a priest?” To Robert he hissed, “Are you? Hey?”

“Ease up,” said Jimmy. “Ease up. Ask him again.”

Outside the door Raymond called again and knocked. “Father, are you in there?”

“Aw, Jayzes,” said Jimmy. They both backed off, wrenched open the door, and raced down the stairs past Raymond. Robert fell to the floor; Raymond saw him. From below came the sound of the motorbike roaring away.

The Mullens ran from the hayfield and explained. Laurence held anti-Treaty views, not shared by Lena. Though not an activist, he allowed Irregulars to meet in the house. These two young men had first arrived on the same night as Robert. In some agitation they had told Laurence that a spy had been put on their trail and they’d need a place to hide.

Robert lay rigid on his bed, his preferred retreat. Laurence peered at him from across the room.

“You’re all right, Father, aren’t you? I mean— you don’t need a doctor?”

The angry red ring of the gun muzzle marked the center of Robert’s forehead. Purple bruises began to bloom on his throat. Lena, desperate to apologize, said that little activity had taken place near them.

“ ‘Tis Dublin and Limerick that are stirring things up.”

As this information reached him, Robert moved to his next level of safety. He lay so low that he seemed to pass out.

For the next half hour all went wild. The Mullen adults lost composure. Nothing would rouse Robert; to hear his breathing required a stillness and silence not present in the house that afternoon; his pulse all but disappeared.

In fact, no danger threatened; shell-shock victims often flee to the refuge of apparent coma.

The two older children, Raymond and Nuala, took over and ran the day. As the parents barked at each other, the youngsters moved in. They took off Robert’s shoes and loosened his belt. While he lay flat they brought cold water and bathed his face. At this, he allowed himself to “wake” again, spoke one or two calm words to assure them that he was “fine, just fine,” and fell asleep.

Laurence, close to ranting, whirled on his feet.

“If this gets out! If people hear this!”

Lena left the room.

Raymond stayed around Robert all evening; Nuala brought food. Laurence and Lena Mullen never reappeared, and Robert never saw them again. Next morning, after a restless night of rising and settling back down and then pacing his room to test his strength, he fled the household at dawn. With no more than a tenuous grip on himself, he walked down through the grass-grown monastery and found his river again.

Had his carers and mentors been following Robert, observing and not intervening, they would have been transfixed. How will he retrieve himself from this? Can he recover?

Seeing him head so urgently for the water might have shaken their nerves. Would he walk, calm as a cloud, down that riverbank and into the middle of his beloved Shannon, longing for the current to flow placidly over his head?

That had been the most-feared risk attaching to this Irish journey: a fragmenting unto death, self-inflicted or provoked. One way or another the possibility had guided much of the care— as Dr. Greenberg had diligently explained.

During the four years of the Great War, more than eighty thousand men, all from active service, had manifested shell shock. The symptoms had a wide scale. At the mild end, the doctors saw extreme fatigue, loss of balance leading to dizziness with a proneness to falling down, and severe failure to concentrate.

After the Armistice of 1918, the studies continued, because in many cases the grave suffering didn’t reduce. Victims still felt helpless. Intense fear gripped them for no reason. If reminded of what had shocked them they still became unbearably distressed.

As the researches continued down the decades, the name of the ailment would change to PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. In expanded studies, observers uncovered the symptom that became known as flashbacks—vivid images, either in dreams or daydreams, of the original traumatizing events.

The effects remained more or less the same. At the lowest level of suffering the victims kept aloof, unable to form attachments. At the extreme end, their failure to feel loving or affectionate toward anybody, coupled with a capacity for astounding rage, could turn them into sociopaths. They could kill, be killed— or kill themselves.

Robert knew nothing of these risks; he didn’t even know how he had come under Sevovicz’s wing. As far as he could recall, one day in the nameless hospital a large man appeared in that tall, narrow white room. Judging from the man’s clothes, he certainly belonged to the clergy. He confirmed it with his first remark: “I’m an archbishop.”

Robert rose from the chair in which he sat all day, every day, and dropped to one knee. As all Catholics must, he sought to kiss the archbishop’s ring.

Sevovicz had had no idea what to expect— a lunatic or a killer, an idiot or a weakling. He took Robert’s hand and raised him to his feet. “I do not wear my episcopal ring. Not in this country.”

With their faces level, he looked into Robert’s eyes. He saw nothing but dullness and pain.

“My name is Anthony Sevovicz.” He repeated it slowly. “Anthony Sev-oh-vitz. I come from Poland. I am the Archbishop of the See of Elk, previously the Coadjutor Bishop of Lublin. You will address me as Your Grace, and from now until your full return to your parish I will be responsible for every part of your life. Sit in your chair.”

Sevovicz sat on the bed and looked at Robert as a doctor looks at a comatose patient— as though Robert were not present. He noted the good looks beneath the ragged expression; he noted the attempts at cleanliness and physical care— but he also noted the many razor nicks, with their red flecks of blood as numerous as measles; the untied shoe; and the grievous scar on the back of the hand, a scar like a red gully across the knuckles, a scar that had been picked at again and again. On Robert’s lip, saliva had dried like a miniature frost.

“Tomorrow,” said Sevovicz, “I will confer with your doctors again. I have come here today to measure whether you are capable yet of living in a house, and it seems to me that you are not. That is what I will work for first— to remove you from this institution and bring you back to health.”

Whether Robert understood, Sevovicz couldn’t say, because the young priest showed no reaction. At that moment, and for quite some time after his discharge, Robert Shannon had no inner dialogue. He heard only screaming voices or mutterings, he had no capacity for internal discourse, no means of private emotional debate, and no intellectual function of sequential thoughts.

When students of the condition settled down after the war, it would soon became clear to them that such disorder might arise not from war alone; parental abuse could cause it too. But that proved more difficult to track because, unlike battlefield shock, the domestic variety went underground. Happily, in the case of Father Shannon, Dr. Greenberg had been able to rule out any such intimate cause.

He believed that Robert would recover in full. The young priest had a powerful secret weapon: intellect. Observers in the field had received the impression that the more educated officer class had been less affected than the enlisted men. Data proved difficult to obtain— nobody had done a study as to whether the disparity had to do with education or numbers; there were, after all, many more men than officers.

Nevertheless, Dr. Greenberg had been watching for the day when Robert’s intellect kicked back in. “When the mind begins to help the heart,” he said, “that will be a good day.”

It hadn’t, not yet, not fully. But in Ireland something important had been working— because not for an instant, not even for the half step of a hesitation, did Robert, patient and protégé, contemplate succumbing to the Shannon’s embrace.