*

‘You can come in now, miss.’

Grace looked at her wrist-watch, but it was too dark to see.

‘It’s 11.30, miss.’

She stepped into a narrow unlit corridor, up steep iron steps. In her hand, sticky with nerves, was the ring. The Catholic chapel, painted red and cream, was on the top floor and now lit by a solitary candle held by a Tommy. They entered it through a rear door.

Above the tabernacle was a big crucifix and there were two tall windows over deep embrasures. Twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets were lining the walls like statues.

It was all so cold, so gloomy, not the way she had planned her wedding. It was to have been in white on Easter Sunday, with Easter lilies.

Lately, she reflected, her life had been a catalogue of calamities. Her elder sister Muriel had been since dawn the widow of MacDonagh. He had left behind two children and no money to care for them. Then there was Kathleen Clarke with her three children. Tom, too, was gone, and Kattie had to face the prospect of her brother Ned following soon.

Grace saw that what was happening to her was part of a pattern. She had no wish to escape it.

Father McCarthy approached the altar, robed in cassock, cotta and white stole. He greeted her with a compassionate smile.

When Joe came in, under guard, through the side door he was in handcuffs. The candle flickered as he passed. Soon, she thought, he will not stir a candle-flame or a leaf on a tree.

Side by side they stood. Her eyes were used to the dark and she saw how thin he was and how his hair flopped over his round boyish face. His skin was creamy-white, like the inside of a horsechestnut burr. Never had she seen him looking so ill or so vulnerable, this man whose high spirits and boundless gaiety had won her heart.

His uniform was creased, his topboots were unpolished and charred by fire. The bandages wrapped high around his throat were soiled and dirty, and he had not shaved in days. Only the rings on his fingers were as she remembered them.

It somehow consoled her to know that his life was nearly over, anyway. Proud that he, a hero, loved her, she recalled a line in a poem he had written for her: ‘But my way is the darkest way.’

Joe’s eyesight was never very good and now he was peering owl-like through his spectacles, trying to make out her features. She smiled consolingly at him.

The priest gestured to two soldiers to act as witnesses and they moved their rifles from hand to hand during the brief ceremony.

Bride and groom both had difficulty with the words, ‘till death do us part.’

When she held up the ring, a soldier unlocked Joe’s handcuffs so he could put it on her finger.

‘With this ring I thee wed.… With my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’

Afterwards, the priest asked them to sign the register. Then two soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment signed, too.

The brief ceremony over, Grace and Joe were not allowed one minute together. For the military, this was a chore to be gone through and it was over. Joe was handcuffed again and led back to his cell.

Grace left the prison to wait in a room that Father McCarthy had booked for her in James’s Street with one of his parishioners called Byrne, who worked in a bell foundry.

At the Byrnes’, Father McCarthy clasped her hand.

‘Wait here, my dear, for a summons from the Governor. Trust me, it will come. Then you will see Joe again.’

The Daly girls were asleep in Fairview, when, just before midnight, Kattie heard a distant lorry. Her instincts were so razor sharp that she shot up in bed, went next door and woke her sisters.

In a strangled scream: ‘They’re coming for Ned.’

‘It’s your nerves, dear,’ Madge said. ‘Go back to bed.’

Kattie was peering through the window. It was some while before a military truck rumbled up.

‘Dear God!’ she gasped, ‘didn’t I tell you?’

She went down and answered the door. A policeman stretched out his hand. ‘A permit from Kilmainham, ma’am, for you to see your brother.’

This was the second from Major Kinsman in twenty-four hours. Kattie’s eyes so ached she could hardly read it.

‘I beg to inform you that your brother is a prisoner in this above prison, and would like to see you tonight. I am sending a car with an attendant to bring you here.’

Her sisters were so tearful and shaky they could hardly put their clothes on.

Kattie said, ‘The permit is for one.’

‘Let them try and stop us,’ said young Laura, who was close to Ned and, like him, full of fire.

The Constable and two soldiers helped them into the truck. Frequent stops at road-blocks made the journey seem endless. Each time, there was a glint of bayonets as lanterns were raised.

‘It says here a permit for one.’

‘They’re sisters,’ the Constable replied. ‘Their kid brother’s being shot.’

‘Pass.’

‘Listen,’ said Kattie. ‘Our brother’s a hero, and we’re daughters and nieces of Fenians.’

They pulled themselves together and prayed to the Virgin Mary that they would have grace like hers when she stood at the foot of the Cross.

When they alighted at the jail, they walked with heads held high and gave their names at the gate in ringing tones, as though they were princesses.

In the lobby, they nearly lost their composure when a soldier called out, ‘Relatives of Daly, to be shot in the morning.’

They held hands to give each other strength.

The officer of the watch was reluctant to let all three in. ‘I’ll compromise,’ he said. ‘One at a time.’

The girls started working it out: Kattie first, then Madge, then Ned’s favourite, Laura.

The officer was touched by their dilemma. ‘All right, you can see him together.’

Five soldiers, one with a candle, escorted them to the central block, up the stairs, and along the catwalk to Cell No 6.

One of them called out gruffly, ‘Daly!’

‘Yes.’

Ned’s mumbly voice made the girls tremble even more.

As a Tommy turned the key, the officer said kindly, ‘Whatever you say will be considered private.’

The door squeaked open and the candle showed Ned blinking, still in his Volunteer uniform. He had been on the floor asleep on a piece of sacking next to a kind of dog biscuit.

Kattie, the most experienced, momentarily barred the entrance to enable Madge to embrace Ned first; he might have a message for her before the soldiers were in earshot.

But Madge’s first words were, ‘Oh, Ned, why are they giving you the highest honours? Why were you chosen to stand with Emmet and Tone?’

All three girls stood with their brother in the middle of the cell, their arms entwined. There they stayed for fifteen minutes, a quiet whirlwind of affection surrounded by soldiers with bared steel. They gathered strength from one another, feeling love pass from each to each in a bond of fond childhood memories and pride in what their family had done for Ireland. Words mattered little.

Kattie said, ‘Give Tom our love.’

Ned gasped. ‘Has he gone?’

‘Yes,’ Kattie said, with fierce pride. ‘So have Pearse and MacDonagh. This morning.’

‘May they rest in peace,’ said Ned, giving Kattie a consoling kiss. ‘What a glorious reunion we’ll have in Heaven, eh?’ He smiled. ‘Sure, Kattie, I’ll give Tom your love. First thing I’ll do.’

He spoke of the brave fight his men had put up. No one broke down until the order to surrender came. He didn’t like it himself and big strong men cried like children.

‘As for me, girls, I’m proud of what I did. Next time, we’ll win. I’m only sorry I won’t be there to do my bit.’

Madge said the whole family would be happy knowing England had given him the martyr’s crown.

‘Your name and spirit will live on, Ned. And one day we’ll all be together in another world.’

He squeezed her arm, ‘Yes. The thought of that makes me very happy.’

Laura chipped in. ‘Uncle John – he’s too ill to travel – well, Uncle John is envious. Know what he said? “Tom and Ned have stolen one on me.” He thinks he’s left it too late to be shot for Ireland.’

Ned gave Kattie a copy of the charge against him.

‘Ridiculous,’ he said, ‘accusing us of assisting the enemy, when they were only trying to assist us.’ The soldiers pricked up their ears when he said, ‘We took a lot of English prisoners. Officers, too. We gave them the best we had.’

‘Why didn’t you shoot them?’ Laura demanded.

‘That wouldn’t be playing the game,’ Ned said, gaily. ‘We had strict orders. Anyone we took was to be treated under the rules of civilized warfare as a prisoner of war. No exceptions allowed.’

Kattie suddenly recognized the soldier holding the candle. He had been there the night before.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘but what happened to my husband?’

‘Well, ma’am,’ he began hesitantly, ‘you’ll be pleased to know he died very brave.’

Kattie had to fight to keep back her tears.

‘I was in the firing-party myself. Never saw a braver, ma’am, and I know ’cos I’ve been in many before.’

Kattie was too overcome to say a proper thank you.

Ned gave them a last message for his mother, his aunt, his other sisters, and Uncle John.

‘Tell them I did my best.’

He gave them his purse with a few small coins in, two pencils, a few buttons from his tunic as mementoes.

‘Time’s up,’ a soldier called.

The family pressed up close as though trying to weld themselves by the fire of love into a single being. When they broke up, there was still not one sob, not one tear. Ours, they seemed to say, is a family of heroes. We don’t cry for our dead.

One last glance passed between Ned and the girls before the door clanged to, leaving him in a tomb-like blackness.

As they descended the stairs, they prayed their legs would not give way. Madge felt Laura falter.

‘Remember,’ she said, sternly, ‘you’re a Daly.’

In the lobby, they ran into the O’Hanrahan sisters, both pale and anxious. They had been waiting nearly half an hour.

Eily O’Hanrahan said, ‘We’re pleased we persuaded our mom not to come.’ She shivered. ‘What a terrible place.’

After they had all embraced, Eily explained, ‘We’ve come to see our Michael. He’s going to be deported.’

‘Is that what they told you?’ Kattie said.

The O’Hanrahans nodded. They showed the Dalys the note handed in at their house: ‘Mr O’Hanrahan, a prisoner in Kilmainham, wishes to see his mother and sisters before his deportation to England.’

Madge, very gently, said, ‘Ned is to be shot at dawn.’

The younger O’Hanrahan girl put her hand to her mouth and gasped, ‘Oh! Michael!’

With growing trepidation, the two sisters went up the steps with an escort. ‘Tell us, please,’ Eily said.

The soldier, unlocking the door of Cell 69, answered, ‘He’s to be shot at dawn, miss.’

Eily said hoarsely, ‘But Mother isn’t here.’

With the officer warning them, ‘Be careful what you say,’ the girls rushed into their brother’s outstretched arms.

‘You know?’ he said.

‘Just this second.’

‘Oh, my poor sisters.’

He had been left in pitch dark, with only a slop bucket and, in the corner, a sack to lie on. The place, long in disuse, reeked of mildew, damp and urine.

He sent his love first to his mother and then the rest of his family.

Eily told him that three were dead already and Ned Daly was going with him at dawn.

‘Silence,’ came from the officer.

Michael said he would like to make his will. Soldiers went and returned with an old table, a chair and a broken stump of candle. He wrote a few lines, witnessed by two soldiers. He had nothing to bequeath except the copyright of his novel, A Swordsman of the Brigade.

When Eily asked if he had eaten, he said, ‘I had some bully beef at four.’

‘That was ten hours ago,’ Eily gasped. ‘Have you had even a drink of water since?’

He shook his head.

Eily turned in a fury on the soldiers. ‘Get him a drink.’

She blinked at the speed with which they acted. They were not cruel, only thoughtless. Within seconds, one returned with a black billycan from which Michael drank deeply.

After a farewell hug, they left him. As the cell door closed, the younger sister fainted on the catwalk.

In reception, the Dalys put in a formal claim for the bodies of Ned and Tom Clarke. Kattie demanded to know where her husband’s body was.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the warder said.

Kattie flared up at that. ‘You not only condemn a man to death in a secret trial and without a defence lawyer, you won’t even let his wife have his corpse.’

Laura offered to send coffins in so their loved ones could be identified and laid with their own. They also signed a form requesting the return of Ned’s uniform.

No sooner were they out of earshot than one soldier said to his mate, ‘They’re burying ’em in quicklime, ain’t they? Even their guardian angels won’t know ’em after that.’

At the gate, the car taking the Dalys home was delayed. The officer of the watch invited them to wait in his office.

‘You have my deepest sympathy.’ He sounded sincere. ‘I just don’t understand how they – and you – could want to assist the enemy.’

Kattie flashed back, ‘That’s easy. We’re Irish. For us, you are the enemy.’

‘What would you do,’ Madge added, ‘if Germany won the war and invaded you?’

When the girls finally made it home to Fairview, they spent the night locked in each other’s arms, praying until the dawn had come and gone.

The car bringing the Pearses broke down at Terenure. Mrs Pearse was terrified that, having missed Pat the night before, she might miss Willie, too. Pat could manage on his own, she knew, but Willie needed her.

Fortunately, the car was fixed and she and Margaret arrived, trembly, at the jail, only to have to wait half an hour in the lobby till other relatives came down.

When their turn came, three soldiers held candles in the cell when she and Margaret entered.

The mother, simple in so many ways, was a person of heroic stature. She had already given a precious gift to Ireland. But it was not easy telling Willie that Pat whom he adored was dead.

Willie received the news like a blow to the heart. When he got his breath back, he explained in his slightly sibilant voice what had happened that day at dawn.

‘Never mind, my darling,’ Mrs Pearse said. ‘You missed him last night but you’ll be with him soon. Will you give him a message from his mother?’

Willie nodded.

‘Tell him I will be braver than ever and I will carry my cross.’

Margaret held Willie’s shaky hand. ‘I can’t tell you how proud we are of you and Pat.’

Mrs Pearse looked at Willie in the candlelight, at that strangely innocent face with its dark sensitive brown eyes. She remembered him as a baby; and, in a way, he seemed never to have lost his child-like innocence. Was it possible that her gentle, lovely son was to be shot as a traitor?

She found herself thinking, instinctively, If only Pat were here to help.

She remembered an incident long ago, when her boys were in their first school run by an old dragon named Miss Murphy. She was chastising Willie, and Pat was not having it. He stood up to stop her. ‘Sit down, Patrick,’ the dragon said. Pat replied, ‘I am not tired, Miss Murphy.’

As to Willie, he knew his death would double his mother’s heartache but he could not desert Pat now. Even at his trial, when the Court was inclining to mercy, he had insisted the he was in on the rising from the beginning. In life and death, he and Pat were inseparable.

Mrs Pearse spoke of Pat’s poem, called ‘The Mother’. He wrote it when he expected that he and Willie would die together.

Willie spoke the lines softly now, for his mother’s sake:

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge

My two strong sons that I have seen go out

To break their strength and die, they and a few

In bloody protest for a glorious thing.

They shall be spoken of among their people,

The generations shall remember them,

And call them blessed;

But I will speak their names to my own heart

In the long nights;

The little names that were familiar once

Round my dead hearth.

Lord, thou art hard on mothers:

We suffer in their coming and their going;

And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary

Of the long sorrow – And yet I have my joy:

My sons were faithful and they fought.

Mrs Pearse stroked her faithful second son’s long soft hair, so like a girl’s. Soon, very soon, as Pat had predicted, they would be together in death.

Willie told her he had asked for a priest but none had come yet, so she enquired of the attending officer, ‘Is Father Aloysius on his way?’

‘Yes, ma’am. That clergyman is coming, I believe.’

In spite of his prompt answer, it sounded as if it had not crossed his mind till then. He could not grasp how important priests were to Irish Catholics. They seemed to want to die anaesthetized by religion.

Mrs Pearse suspected he was not telling the truth. She ended the visit in order to check. Willie needed a priest more than he needed her.

They said a last goodbye.

Willie looked at his mother; and his long sad face was etched in her memory for ever. Then she and Margaret hurried down to the lobby where she was handed Pat’s letters written to her the night before, though some others were held back.

Margaret called out to a group of officers, ‘Gentlemen, will you send for a priest? There’s only an hour left.’

They promised her they would send for one at once. Major Lennon said, ‘Dammit, I forgot. We might have to delay the executions now.’

It was 2 a.m. and Grace had been lying down for only half an hour when there was a rap on the door. A constable handed her a letter from the Governor. Grace Plunkett was now permitted to see her husband.

The word surprised and delighted her.

‘Husband.’

She whispered it over and over as the car sped through the quiet streets, and as she went through the small entrance gate, into the reception area, and up the steps to Cell No 88.

‘Ten minutes, ma’am.’

On entering the jail, she had noticed the sky lightening. No dawn would ever be the same again.

But only ten minutes? And in a small cell with an NCO and several soldiers with fixed bayonets crowded round the door?

The Sergeant examined his watch as if to time a race.

The only light was a candle. Grace picked out a plank for a bed with one blanket, a tin basin with gruel but no spoon.

Joe beckoned her to sit down on the stool and he knelt over her like a penitent confessing. This was to be their only honeymoon. The newly-weds who had so much to say to each other and so little time to say it were tongue-tied.

Perplexed by this meaningless cruelty, the best Grace could do was try and fix every detail in her mind: what he looked like, said, wanted to say but left unsaid, the candlelight reflected in his eyes. She caught a whiff of wood-smoke on his clothes, in his hair.

She had to be brave for his sake. But who understands the human heart? Would it help him if she cried or make it harder? For tears are words to those in love.

Those few precious minutes seemed first like hours and then like only seconds.

The soldiers were sleepy-eyed. Most of the faces were Irish faces. Some were downy, had never shaved; they were younger even than she and Joe. Would they really break up a marriage so recent? Would they kill a dying man, not any dying man but her Joseph who was only twenty-nine years old?

Their uniform provided them with absolution, turned murder into mere killing. They were doing a job, like a corporation employee clearing a drain or chopping up a tree that blocked the road.

Yes, without hate they would do this hateful thing.

It was fast approaching 3 o’clock when there was a bang on the friary door in Bow Street. The soldier said, ‘Hurry, sirs, there’s not much time left.’

The four priests had long been ready, wondering why the summons was so late. Clutching the bags with their gear for the last rites, they were driven off into the night.

In Joe’s cell, the Sergeant tensed as the second hand neared the end of its last cycle.

Sensing this, Grace took out a pencil and wrote on the wall: ‘This is Joseph Plunkett’s cell whence he left me for his execution. (Signed) Grace Plunkett.’

He had left her his name. She wrote it with pride. Yes, she thought, that is a fine name to have and this ghastly place is sacred now.

Joe slipped her something as the Sergeant called, ‘Time’s up.’ The Tommies bolted to attention.

Grace kissed Joe, clung fiercely to him before hands, not rough but firm, drew them apart.

‘My darling, my husband, goodbye.’

As she was led away, she turned and saw, as through a mist, his frail figure framed in the doorway. Her heart went out to him in his terrible ordeal.

Now she was free to weep. She would never bear his child, nor feel any more his hand upon her. For ever she would be alone. Except he would be with her always, day and night, in all that might have been.

She suddenly remembered the things Joe had pressed in her hands. His keys, a lock of his hair, and a piece of paper with writing on it. His final memento. Downstairs in the lobby, by candlelight, she began to read this poem of his.

I see his blood upon the rose

And in the stars the glory of his eyes,

His body gleams amid eternal snows,

His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;

The thunder and the singing of the birds

Are but his voice – and carven by his power

Rocks are his written words.

The Commandant was busy issuing orders.

To Captain Kenneth O’Morchoc, he said, ‘I want you to take charge of the firing party.’

The Captain hesitated. ‘Something wrong?’

O’Morchoc said, ‘Request permission to stand down, sir.’

‘What the hell’s the matter, man? Lost your nerve?’

‘No, sir. Plunkett and I played together as children.’

The Commandant sighed. ‘Permission granted.’

A car halted outside the prison and four friars jumped out and rushed into the lobby.

The Major called out to them, ‘You do understand, gentlemen, that we are running behind schedule.’

Father Columbus went to Daly since he had attended his brother-in-law; but he had learned his lesson.

Father Albert went to O’Hanrahan, Father Sebastian to Plunkett and Father Augustine to Willie Pearse.

The cell doors were open. The prisoners’ hands were already bound when the priests heard their confessions and gave them Holy Communion.

Willie had his cap on. A soldier, realizing he was unable to remove it for confession, unbound his hands. After giving him the sacraments, Father Augustine popped in to see O’Hanrahan.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘would you go and see my mother and sisters for me?’

The burly friar, pressing his hands down on Michael’s thick black hair, said, ‘I promise you, my son.’

He could not understand this insane haste to have men killed.

Daly was already being marched to the Yard with Father Columbus. Each friar went with his assigned prisoner. After Daly, Willie Pearse was called, then O’Hanrahan, and finally Joseph Mary Plunkett.

With each deadly volley, the kindly Capuchins marvelled at the men’s composure.

Joe asked Father Sebastian to give his ring to his wife and his glasses to his mother.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘I am very happy. I’m dying for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland.’

Grace was asking herself if Joe would feel the bullets. Would he hear the roar of the rifles or did bullets travel that split-second faster than the sound of the guns?

Please God, she prayed, there would be no dying, only being dead.

At the time when she guessed her Joseph was facing the firing squad, Grace, fingering her wedding-ring, was saying to herself, ‘Till death do us part.’

But she knew, even as she heard in her head the fatal volley that turned her from a young bride into a widow, that nothing in her life or death would ever part them. Even though his feet would never walk her way again and his strong heart had ceased to beat.

She read the last verse of Joe’s poem.

All pathways by his feet are worn,

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,

His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn

His cross is every tree.

When the O’Hanrahan sisters got home their mother asked anxiously, ‘How was Michael? You gave him my love?’

‘In the pink,’ they said.

They had decided not to tell her that night; she would not believe them, anyway. It would come better from a priest.

Mrs Pearse and Margaret returned to St Enda’s, which had been Pat’s dream and which Willie had helped him build. It seemed so empty now, as if everything – desks, easels, beds in the dormitories – had all been removed.

In Pat’s study, they went on their knees and prayed until Mrs Pearse stopped biting her fingers and, sensing the falcon had flown to the falconer, said, ‘They’re together again.’

The priests returned to the friary and immediately began making preparations to celebrate Requiem Mass.

When, that morning, the newspapers appeared on the streets, they approved the firm action taken by the authorities.

An editorial in the Irish Independent said, ‘No terms of denunciation that pen could indite would be too strong to apply to those responsible for the insane and criminal rising of last week.’

‘Insane’ was the most popular word to describe both the rising and its leaders.

In the Letters page of the London Times, one writer expressed a feeling of ‘detestation and horror’ at the very thought of rebellion against English rule. The rebels should be treated firmly. ‘This is no time for amnesties and pardon; it is time for punishment, swift and stern.’

This appeared over the name not of a retired General but of ‘John Dublin’, the Protestant Archbishop. Many Irish people reading it concluded that anything which a Protestant Archbishop looked on with detestation and horror could not be all bad.

By 10.30 a.m., the O’Hanrahan girls were in Church Street looking for Father Augustine when they ran into him as he was leaving a house.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’d be delighted to come and see your mother. Wasn’t I just on my way there, anyhow? But first come into our parlour.’

After he had calmed them a little, they walked together to the North Circular Road.

The girls stayed outside praying while the priest went in to break to Mrs O’Hanrahan the news that her brave son, Michael, had died for Ireland.

In Richmond Barracks, one of the prisoners, old Count Plunkett, had been unable to sleep on the floor. For a long time he had stood up until his comrades managed to persuade a guard to find him an orange box. There he sat hunched up for hours on end, his homburg hat on his head, his white beard poking out of the two army greatcoats with which they tried to keep him warm.

The Count was so ill, they sent for a military doctor who tactlessly asked, ‘Are you the father of Joseph Plunkett who was shot this morning?’

That was how Count Plunkett learned of the death of his son.

Each afternoon, in Richmond Barracks, two to three hundred men were paraded and sent to the boat for internment in England.

On this particular afternoon, some were chosen from Cell A. Liam O’Briain was one of them and, to his utter delight, so was Sean McDermott. Though Sean was next to him, Liam did not speak for fear of drawing attention to him. The English soldiers did not know them. With luck, Sean would make the boat and escape what, otherwise, was inevitable death. ‘Prisoners,’ an English NCO called, ‘atten-tion. Quick—’

‘Hold it, Corporal.’

It was a Castle detective, Inspector Burton.

‘I’ll just run my eye over this little lot.’ In seconds, he had lighted on Sean McDermott. A nod from a colleague, Dan Hoey, confirmed his suspicion. ‘Well, what have we here?’ He beckoned him out of the ranks. ‘You didn’t really think you’d get away from me, did you?’

McDermott’s face darkened. ‘You seem to change your mind a lot,’ he said.

Michael Collins, another on parade, swore that one day he would take revenge on that Inspector.

Later that afternoon, MacBride, Mallin and Sean Heuston were to be tried.

Sean T. Kelly, who had worked in communications during the rising, was at an upstairs window when they were marched across the square. MacBride, he knew, had little chance of getting off. The authorities had not forgiven him for raising an Irish Brigade to fight the British in the Boer War.

MacBride went in first. He marched in and stood to attention, every inch a soldier.

General Blackadder seemed to read in his eyes: ‘You are soldiers. So am I. You have won. I have lost. Do your worst.’

He was allowed to call a witness, Mrs Allan. No chair was provided, so MacBride jumped up and offered her his. She testified that he had not been involved in planning the rebellion, he simply chanced on it.

MacBride was found guilty, all the same.

When he emerged on to the square, Kelly raised the window. ‘Been sentenced, Major?’

‘Later tonight. But it’s a foregone conclusion, Sean T.’ MacBride pointed a finger at his heart. ‘I’ll get it in the morning.’

‘Something might turn up.’

‘Nothing will save me, Sean T. This is the second time I’ve sinned against them. Their chance of revenge, eh?’

MacBride clasped one hand with the other and raised them in the air as if shaking with all his friends.

‘Goodbye and God be good to you, Sean T.’

It was Mallin’s turn. Before going before the Court, he warmly embraced William Partridge, who had been with him in the College of Surgeons. In the cold nights since, they had huddled up together. Whenever Mallin felt especially homesick, Partridge, an older man, had comforted him.

The chief witness was de Courcy Wheeler, to whom he had surrendered.

The President said, ‘Perhaps you would care to question the Captain.’

‘No, sir,’ Mallin replied, fingering his rosary. ‘I merely wish to place on record how grateful my comrades and I are for the consideration he showed us.’

‘It is so recorded,’ said the President.

After the trial, the three condemned were taken to Kilmainham.

Mallin’s house was only two hundred yards from the jail; the lorry had to pass it. He peered out the back, hoping to catch a last glimpse of his wife and children. He did not know that his wife had been advised to move around regularly to avoid being picked up by the military. All that Mallin saw was his pet dog, Prinie, prized because she had once saved his little daughter from a rearing horse. Prinie was sitting like a faithful guardian by the front door.

And the house, a tiny terraced house, how beautiful it seemed, so serene, so full of wonder.

‘My precious darling wife,’ he prayed fervently, ‘come out and show yourself with little Joseph.’ She never did.

Goodbye.

He felt he had lost his last chance of ever seeing his wife and baby son again.

*

It was the Countess’s turn to face court martial at Richmond. She was taken there from her isolation cell in Kilmainham.

As to assisting the enemy, she pleaded not guilty.

As to causing disaffection among the population towards British rule, she pleaded, ‘Guilt-ay 200 per cent and prahd of it.’

The first witness was a seventeen-year-old page boy at the University Club. He claimed to have seen the Countess fire a pistol at the Club from behind a monument in the Green.

The Countess got satisfaction out of showing his testimony was a tissue of lies. Not that it mattered since she was perfectly willing to agree with the next witness, Captain Wheeler, that she handed him her pistol when they surrendered. She also acknowledged that she was Mallin’s second in command.

When the Captain stood down, the President said, ‘Madam, have you anything to say?’

In a voice as English as his, she said, dismissively: ‘Yes, old feller. I went out to fight for Arland’s freedom and it doesn’t matter a tinker’s cuss what happens to me. I did what I thought was right and I stand by it.’

She was taken back to Kilmainham Jail where she expected the same fate as the rest.

Father Augustine again spent part of his afternoon at the Officers’ Quarters on the North Circular Road.

‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if I will be needed tomorrow morning?’

The CO winked. ‘Padre, I’ll send a car for you.’

At 9 that evening, Sir John French received another anxious note from the PM.

Warned by Redmond, he did not like the idea of four more leaders being shot that morning. He asked Sir John to convey to Maxwell that wholesale executions might easily cause a revulsion of feeling in England and lay up a store of future trouble in Ireland.

Sir John was irritated. Really, politicians were the limit. They asked the army to clean up their messes, then complained because a few heads got broken.

He called in his secretary. ‘A wire to General Maxwell.’

Having explained the Prime Minister’s worries, he made a fatal addition of his own.

‘There is no intention to interfere with the freedom of action or initiative which you as C-in-C now have.’

He snapped his fingers in the direction of his secretary. ‘That’s all. Send it off right away.’

In Kilmainham Jail, a stone’s throw away from where Maxwell was going through his list of executions, the Countess was still awake when someone quietly unlocked the padlock and eased back the bolt. It was the Tommy on duty.

He came in and offered her a cigarette. He knew she had been found guilty and felt sorry for her. She was middle-aged. A woman. An English woman. It just did not seem right to court-martial her.

As they smoked, he let her ask questions. He was not too careful; she was destined for the bullet soon.

‘Who’s been shot so far?’

He reeled off seven names. There were no surprises, except for Willie Pearse. He was merely his brother’s shadow.

‘Any tomorrow?’ She did not really expect an answer.

‘Chap name of MacBride.’

‘MacBride? But he had nothing to do with the planning.’

The Tommy shrugged; he was a soldier, not a politician.

When Father Augustine entered his cell, Major MacBride’s first words were, ‘A pity, Padre, we had to throw in the towel, don’t you think?’ Before the priest could answer, he said, cheerfully, ‘I asked a Tommy for water to wash in and know what he brought me? A cupful.’

Father Augustine’s cathedral laugh merged with MacBride’s and rolled around the tiny cell.

The prisoner handed over a pound note, silver and copper coins. ‘For the poor.’ He tugged his rosary out of his pocket like an earth worm. ‘Give that to my mother, will you?’ He removed his watch, not a tremble of the hands, from his waistcoat. ‘And that.’

He had been thinking of his wife, Maud Gonne, and how, though they had fallen out, she would, at least, approve of the manner of his death.

Then there was their son, Sean, at school in Paris, how would he take the news and what would become of him?

He knelt and confessed with the simplicity of a child.

Father Augustine gave him Communion, after which they prayed together.

‘I’ll stay with you to the end,’ the priest promised, ‘and anoint you when you fall.’

‘Kind of you, Padre.’

Soldiers came along the cat-walk with metallic tread, there was a knock on the door.

The Countess had spent the night waiting to hear the shots that put an end to brave MacBride. With the coming of dawn and the dread, her ears were supersensitive. She heard the tramp of soldiers below and knew that the firing squad had arrived.

Though he was in the next block, she wanted to beat on the door and call out, ‘MacBride, Major MacBride, God-speed.’ But that would have betrayed the kind Tommy who had confided in her. She stuffed her hands in her mouth.

MacBride was escorted downstairs to the back door.

‘Would you mind,’ he said, ‘if I don’t have my hands bound? I promise to keep perfectly still.’

But they were fastened behind him.

‘Surely, soldier, I don’t have to be blindfolded?’

‘Sorry, sir, them’s my orders.’

Hooded like a falcon, MacBride turned to the priest, and, remembering the Boer War, said, ‘Padre, it’s not as if I never looked down the barrels of their guns before.’

As a piece of paper was being pinned over his heart, the friar whispered in his ear: ‘We are all sinners, my son. Offer up your life for any faults or sins of the past.’

‘I’m glad you told me that, Father. I will.’

With Father Augustine guiding him and flanked by two armed men, he stepped out into the Yard with an almost jaunty air.

He had had a full life; married a beautiful woman, fathered a son, fought in many a battle, so that death, a soldier’s death, seemed a fitting end.

He lifted his head and smelled the air. ‘A fine morning, Padre.’

The big priest beside him shuddered. ‘A bit chilly.’

Beneath the blindfold, walking, as the priest thought, by the light of the Angel’s Lamp, the prisoner smiled as if to say the cold did not matter all that much.

Big, gentle Father Augustine was praying, ‘De profundis,’ but never had he called to God out of such great depths before.

The prisoner was positioned at the wall, fifty feet from the firing squad. The escort moved to the left, near the Governor and the prison doctor.

Father Augustine was transfixed on the spot near MacBride. The officer led him gently to the right. ‘This way, please.’

MacBride said, lingeringly, ‘Goodbye, Padre.’

As the officer spoke a word of command, MacBride straightened his broad shoulders, drew in his stomach, and his mouth assumed the shape of a big O.

Death, however long-awaited, always came suddenly like the cork out of a champagne bottle, like a stranger from behind a tree.

The officer lowered his hand. With the volley echoing around the Yard, the prisoner collapsed like a sack of grain.

The officer held the priest back just long enough for him to put a bullet in the dead man’s brain.

Father Augustine knelt to anoint the warm quivering flesh. ‘Per istam sanctam unctionem.…’

MacBride’s brave spirit, he felt, was already winging its way to God.

‘One more execu-tion. One more execu-tion.’

The Connollys heard the newsboy’s cry and Lillie, nearly out of her mind, clutched the children to her as Nora ran out to buy a paper.

Trying to stop herself shuddering, Nora returned, a false smile on her face. ‘It’s not Daddy.’

‘Who?’ said several voices.

Nora’s face clouded over as she told them.

To Kattie Clarke, the Major’s death was another blow. First Tom, then Ned, now MacBride, the witness at her wedding in New York.

She remembered how the trunk containing her wedding dress had been missing from the boat, and MacBride had patted her arm. She had never forgotten his comforting words, ‘Never mind your trousseau, girl, you’re marrying a hero, aren’t you?’

Around midday, in Westport, County Mayo, MacBride’s hometown, a twelve-year-old boy, Tom Heavey, was standing outside Joyce’s, the newsagent’s, when a railwayman passed and said, ‘MacBride was shot this morning.’

Mrs Joyce, biting back her tears, said, ‘Get on your bike, lad, and go tell the poor one at once.’

Tom, not sure what the message meant, pedalled as fast as he could to the Quay and burst into the ship chandler’s shop and up the winding steps. Without knocking or removing his cap, he went into a quiet, dark room where a silver-haired old lady was seated, hands on her lap, by the window.

Honoria MacBride had been a widow for forty-eight years, since her Sean was six months old. She raised her wrinkled eyes, questioningly.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Tom got out, breathlessly, ‘but it seems, well, the Major—’

There was anguish now in Honoria’s face.

‘Shot this morning, ma’am.’

Without a word, the old lady just bowed her head.

At Richmond Barracks, it was Kent’s turn to be tried. He stood tall and straight before the court, betraying no emotion.

At 4 in the afternoon, he wrote a note to his wife.

I expect the death sentence which better men have already suffered. I only regret that I have now no longer the opportunity of showing you how I think of you now that the chance of seeing you again is so remote. I shall die like a man for Ireland’s sake.

Later, he changed the heading of the note from Richmond to Kilmainham, where he awaited execution in Joe Plunkett’s cell.

His wife came unexpectedly to visit him and it had a profound effect on him. It seemed to humanize him, to make him feel things he had suppressed for years.

Afterwards, he wrote to her.

Aine, my wife,

In memory of me, Aine, my thousand loves, tell Ronan that I am dying for Ireland. When understanding comes to him with the years, he will understand that much. Dulce est pro Patria mori. This is 7th day of May 1916, E. K.

He added a note for his boy.

To my dear poor little son, Ronan, from his father who is on the point of dying tomorrow for Ireland. Goodbye, E. K.

PS Take good care of your dear mother. May God help the two of you and may He give you both long life and happiness. God free Ireland.

After several attempts, de Valera’s wife, Sinead, finally managed to see the American Consul, Edward L. Adams. He had been out of town during the rising and had only just returned.

She asked him to intervene on Eamon’s behalf.

‘Why come to me, ma’am?’

Sinead took out of her purse a copy of her husband’s birth certificate. Twice, British soldiers had raided her house in search of it. Fortunately, it was kept in de Valera’s family home in Munster Street.

‘As you see, sir, my husband was born in New York. He is, therefore, an American citizen, surely?’

Even if this were so, the Consul had heard that de Valera had spent almost his entire life in Ireland. He had openly boasted that he was Irish not English. Nor had he at the age of twenty-one taken an oath of American citizenship.

Adams was not in a position to check all the facts, nor was he yet sure of his Government’s attitude to the rebellion.

When he made representations to Major Price and Sir Matthew Nathan, he found them both sympathetic. They had no wish to embarrass the American administration.

Nathan glanced at his watch. It was 6.15 p.m. on his last day. He had packed and, the Perfect Civil Servant, was at his desk till the end.

He took a last look around his office with its tall windows and grand ceiling. He printed on his mind the spot where the policeman fell when the rising began – was it really only eleven days ago?

Accompanied by his assistant, he drove to Kingstown.

O’Farrell looked out over the cold grey bay. ‘Looks like a stormy crossing, sir.’

Nathan smiled. He had feared storms on the Irish Sea. He had realized, too late, that the storms over the land were worse.

He did not know that travelling in the opposite direction was a new Post Master General, Albert Pease. Asquith had said to him, ‘Do try and get Wimborne to resign without a fuss.’

In London, next morning, Nathan worked from 9.15 a.m. to 11.45 a.m. in the Irish Office. At midday, he was in No 10. Present, apart from the PM, were Birrell and Birrell’s temporary successor, Sir Robert Chalmers.

The meeting lasted for two and a half hours, with Nathan giving an update. The PM quizzed him particularly on local reaction to the executions. He reported that the tide of opinion in Ireland was turning. Sympathy for the rebels was growing and changing them into patriots.

Asquith had gathered something of the sort. Not only Redmond, many others were suggesting to him that Maxwell was indulging in slow and secret vengeance, that the General’s deafness to howls of protest was alienating even those who had opposed the rising.

Nathan was not in a strong position but he urged that executions should cease and martial law be withdrawn at once.

The PM thanked him for his devoted service, and no sooner had Nathan left than he got on to the War Office.

‘I realize,’ he told French, ‘that you are going slowly, but not slowly enough, I fear.’

French told him that Maxwell, as the PM had directed, was on his way to London.

‘Fine. Ask him to attend our next Cabinet Meeting.’

The Cabinet listened to what Maxwell had to say. He had been given a free hand and put down the rebellion in a couple of days. He was now busy making sure it would not happen again.

The PM could see that what required the skill of a diplomat had been left to a plain blunt soldier.

The meeting ended with Asquith formally commending the General for his success. He expressly forbade the execution of women. Maxwell had already heard from Bonham Carter on that score. The PM, however, still left to Maxwell’s discretion those who would be executed.

‘I am referring, naturally,’ Asquith emphasized, ‘only to ring-leaders and proven murderers. Even there, General, may I suggest that these executions be brought to a close as soon as possible so Ireland can return to normality.’

The Foreign Office in London received cable No 371/2851 from Sir Cecil Spring-Rice in Washington.

Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore was urging the British to be lenient to their Irish prisoners. His Eminence felt all respectable Irishmen condemned the revolt but ‘there was a danger of manufacturing martyrs with senseless executions.’

A member of the Foreign Office staff guffawed, ‘It would take a vast amount of “manufacturing” to turn Casement into a martyr, eh?’

There were knowing sniggers all round.

In Kilmainham, a young officer visited the Countess Markievicz in her cell. ‘I have come, ma’am, to report to you the sentence of the court.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you are a darling.’ She gestured to the wooden plank that served as a bed. ‘Do take a seat.’

Going a bright red, he remained standing to attention. He read out the official notice: she was condemned to death. ‘General Maxwell has confirmed it.’

‘Jolly good.’

‘But on account of the prisoner’s sex—’

‘Which is hardly my fault.’

‘He has commuted it.’

In his embarrassment, the young man had dropped his voice.

‘Would you mind repeating that, old bean.’

He coughed. ‘Commuted it.’

‘Gracious me,’ she said. ‘I took the same risks as the men, surely I’m entitled to be executed for Arland, too.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ the officer said, hesitantly, ‘that you have any rights in the matter.’

‘What will happen to me, then?’ she asked. ‘I don’t suppose the King’ll ask me to Buckingham Palace to pin a medal on my treacherous bosom.’

‘Life imprisonment, ma’am.’

‘Life imprisonment? Oh, Lor’. I know it’s not your bally fault, old darling,’ the Countess sighed, ‘but I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.’

In the chapel of Kilmainham Jail, Father McCarthy celebrated Sunday Mass. The women were in the gallery at the rear, the men at floor level, among them Commandants Kent and Mallin, as well as Sean Heuston and Con Colbert.

When Mass was over, the men were ordered to form up and leave first. The women stood to attention and saluted.

A Tommy yelled, ‘Put those arms down.’

They did not budge.

‘Put them down, y’hear!’

The women went on saluting until all their officers and men had left.

Later that morning, Pease, the new Post Master General, went to see Wimborne at the Lodge.

His Excellency told him that Maxwell was frightening everyone with his endless executions. ‘In my view, a terrible mistake.’

As tactfully as possible, Pease suggested that the PM might like to see a clean sweep of the Administration.

Wimborne was incensed.

‘Not me! If I resigned it would imply I had made mistakes.’ He fluttered his furry eyelashes. ‘Never! If Nathan and Birrell had accepted my advice there would not have been one rebel at large to start a rising.’

Mrs O’Hanrahan was told that Henry, her second son, was not to be executed like Michael. His sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment.

There was joy in Kimmage, too, when the execution of Joe Plunkett’s brothers, George and John, was commuted to ten years.

On the streets and in the bars, people grew more hopeful.

On that peaceful Sunday afternoon, a letter was put through the letter box of Bill O’Brien’s house.

‘For you, Lillie.’

The message, on Castle writing paper, said, ‘If Mrs Connolly will call at Dublin Castle Hospital on Monday or Tuesday at 11 o’clock she can see her husband.’

She had been awaiting a call for days. Every hour, every minute had brought fresh anxiety. Now that word had come, terror gripped her.

‘They’re going to shoot him, too.’

‘No, no, Mommie,’ Ina said. ‘They wouldn’t dare shoot a wounded man.’

‘Maybe he’s better,’ Lillie said. ‘Maybe he’s well enough to shoot now.’

‘Mommie,’ Ina insisted, ‘can’t you tell things are changing. No one was shot this morning.’

‘It’s Sunday, a holy day.’

‘Nor yesterday,’ Ina insisted.

‘Look at the note,’ insisted Nora. ‘It says you can come Monday or Tuesday. If anything had been settled, they would have given you a definite date.’

Lillie read the note three more times, trying to get at the words behind the words. ‘That must be true.’

A moment later, she wailed, ‘But I still don’t believe it.’

In Kilmainham, Colbert, Mallin, Heuston and Kent were told individually of the sentence of the Court.

‘You are to die at dawn tomorrow.’

Mallin, still upset at having seen his dog but not his wife and children, asked ‘Our families. Will they be allowed to visit us?’

The officer said, ‘The Commandant is drawing up papers this very minute to arrange transport for close relatives.’

Heuston was in Cell 19. He dropped a line to his brother, Michael, studying to be a Dominican priest, hoping he would be free to come.

To his teacher-sister, a Dominican nun, he wrote:

My dearest Mary,

Before this note reaches you I shall have fallen as a soldier in the cause of Irish freedom. I write to bid you a last farewell in this world.

If you really love me teach the children in your class the history of their own land, and teach them that the cause of Caitlin Ni Uallachain never dies. Ireland shall be free from the centre to the sea as soon as the people of Ireland believe in the necessity for Ireland’s Freedom and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain it.

In Cell 20, Kent wrote out a statement for the public. His stern exterior was his way of hiding from outsiders his passion for Ireland and his deep feelings for his wife and son.

His view was, the Republicans were wrong to surrender. They should have fought to a finish.

The enemy has not cherished one generous thought for those who, with little hope, with poor equipment, and weak in numbers, withstood his forces for one glorious week.

Ireland has shown she is a Nation. This generation can claim to have raised sons as brave as any that went before. And in the years to come Ireland will honour those who risked all for her honour at Easter in 1916.

I bear no ill will towards those against whom I have fought. I have found the common soldiers and the higher officers human and companionable, even the English who were actually fighting against us.

I wish to record the magnificent gallantry and fearless, calm determination of the men who fought with me. All, all, were simply splendid. Even I knew no fear nor panic and shrunk from no risk even as I shrink not now from the death that faces me at daybreak.

I hope to see God’s face even for a moment in the morning. His will be done. All here are very kind. My poor wife saw me yesterday and bore up – so my warder told me – even after she left my presence.

Poor Aine, poor Ronan. God is their only shield now that I am removed. And God is a better shield than I.

In Cell 17, Con Colbert, an assistant clerk in a bakery, wrote ten brief notes to his brothers, sisters and a few friends.

To one sister, Nora, he said, ‘Don’t blame me – perhaps God’s way of saving my soul.’

He did not want even his most beloved sister Lila to come. He chose to die uncomforted rather than cause pain to those dear to him.

In Cell 18, Michael Mallin wrote to his parents:

Forgive your poor son who is set to meet his death. Dear father, forgive me all, and you, dear mother, the pain I give you now.

I tried, with others, to make Ireland a free nation and failed. Others failed before us and paid the price and so must we. Goodbye until I meet you in heaven.

Goodbye again. A kiss for you, dear mother. God bless you all.

Your loving son, Michael.

Mallin’s four children ranged from Seamus, who was twelve, to Joseph, aged two and a half. He missed them terribly. There was another on the way.

To his wife he wrote:

My darling Wife, Pulse of my heart,

This is the end of all earthly things; sentence of Death has been passed, and a quarter to four tomorrow the sentence will be carried out by shooting and so must Irishmen pay for trying to make Ireland a free nation. God’s will be done.

I am prepared but, oh my darling, if only you and the little ones were coming too, if we could all reach Heaven together. My heart-strings are torn to pieces when I think of you and them, of our manly Seamus, happy-go-lucky Sean, shy warm Una, Daddy’s girl, and oh, little Joseph, my little man, my little man.

Wife, dear Wife, I cannot keep the tears back when I think of him. He will rest in my arms no more. To think that I have to leave you to battle through the world with them without my help.

We have been married thirteen years or so and in all that time you have been a true loving wife, too good for me.

You love me, my own darling. Think only of the happy times we spent together, forgive and forget all else.

I do not believe our Blood has been shed in vain. I believe Ireland will come out greater and grander but she must not forget she is Catholic, she must keep her Faith.

I find no fault with the soldiers or police. I forgive them from the bottom of my heart. Pray for all the souls who fell in this fight, Irish and English.

God and his Blessed Mother take you and my dear ones under their care. A husband’s blessing on your dear head, my loving wife.

A father’s blessing on the heads of my dear children Seamus, Sean, Una, Joseph, my little man, my little man, my little man. His name unnerves me again. All your dear faces arise before me.

God bless you, God bless you, my darlings. Your loving Husband, Michael Mallin, Commandant, Stephen’s Green Command.

I enclose the buttons off my sleeve. Keep them in memory of me. Mike XXXXXX

Around midnight, military cars were despatched to bring in the relatives.

Mallin’s wife, five months pregnant, was not at home. She was staying with the two youngest at Harold’s Cross with Tom, her husband’s brother. The eldest boy, Seamus, and young Sean were being looked after by their grandmother and Aunt Kate.

When the car came, a policeman, a family friend, handed the official note to the grandmother, saying, with tears in his eyes, ‘Mick’s race is run.’

She woke Seamus and Sean with, ‘Get dressed, boys.’

She was not crying but her attitude conveyed that something awful was about to happen.

Heuston was visited by his mother, his sister, aunt and a first cousin, Lil. His brother Michael came in a special car from Tallaght with his Novice Master, Michael Browne. Father Browne, a tall Dominican, was in his black and white habit. He stayed in the waiting-room, while the relatives went ahead.

They found Sean in a bare unlit cell. The young Tommy who held the candle had no stomach for the task, for he was doing his best not to cry.

Seeing how weepy his relatives were, Sean begged them not to break down.

Their conversation was punctuated by NCOs putting their heads in the door to check all was well. And once, a loud voice was heard outside, saying, ‘Remember, these must be got away by three.’

Con Colbert had no family visiting but a woman prisoner came to see him, the wife of Seamus O’Murchadha, a captain of the Fourth Battalion. She had cooked for them in the Marrowbone Lane Garrison.

She began breezily with, ‘How are you, Con?’

‘I’m one of the lucky ones.’

‘You mean—?’ She gulped back the rush of tears.

He gripped her hand. ‘Sorry, I thought you knew.’

She shook her head.

‘Better be a corpse than a coward,’ he said.

‘And Eamonn Kent?’

‘He has drawn lucky, too.’

He asked her to keep his prayer book for his sister, Lila, and a few buttons for others dear to him.

‘They left me nothing else.’ She took them reverently. ‘I never felt happier,’ he assured her. ‘I never thought I would have the honour of dying for Ireland.’

With the soldier guarding him in tears, the young woman knelt for Con’s blessing.

He protested. ‘I’m not a priest.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re a martyr for Ireland.’

Smiling, just to please her, he made the sign of the cross over her bowed head.

The Mallin family arrived, including Michael’s two brothers, Tom and Bart, and his sister Kate.

Mallin had primed Seamus to look after his wife and other children in case he were taken from them. But he was only twelve and still not fully awake. The prison with its solemn atmosphere frightened them all. They passed a cell lit by candlelight from which came the sound of the rosary being said.

In the next cell was their father.

Mallin greeted them with a small blanket around his shoulders and a rosary draped round his wrist. He had a smile on his face, but there was no joy in it.

He said, ‘I am to die at dawn.’

His broken-hearted wife could not believe it. He had told her they would escape and continue the fight in the country.

As to the children, they could not grasp they would never see their daddy again.

Father Browne had been kicking his heels in the waiting-room long enough. He insisted on being allowed to see Heuston.

Sean, looking very serene, thanked him for coming.

The Dominican stayed only briefly because he heard crying next door and wanted to help.

Mallin’s guard asked him for his permit. Father Browne put his finger to his ear to suggest that he listen to the weeping inside the cell.

The soldier stepped aside. ‘Just walk in, sir.’

The priest in his Dominican robes momentarily silenced the family’s lament.

Mallin said he was having the best wish in his life fulfilled: holding baby Joseph in his arms for the last time. To his wife, he said, ‘Darling, if you go to Liberty Hall, in the room overlooking the river, you’ll find a piece of poplin which—’

‘The Hall’s not there any more,’ she said.

Comforted by his family, even this did not upset him too much.

He turned to Fr Browne. ‘See this one, Father,’ – he indicated Joseph – ‘I want him to become a priest.’

‘That’s grand,’ the priest said, politely.

Mallin pointed to his wife. ‘Another one on the way, Father. If it’s a girl, I want her baptized Mary, in honour of the Blessed Virgin.’

Little Sean tugged on his father’s tunic. ‘I don’t like it in here, Daddy. Why don’t you come home with us?’

When the relatives left, the jail settled down to an unnerving silence. A new day was beginning. It was 8 May.

A military car brought two Capuchins. Father Albert went to Mallin and Father Augustine to Kent.

After Kent had received the sacraments, he said, ‘You have to make other visits?’

Father Augustine nodded.

‘Would you come back’ – he gestured at the paper on the table – ‘when I have finished?’

As the priest rose to go, Kent took out his watch, the one thing he wanted Ronan to have. It showed 2.30 a.m. The seconds, the last of his life, ticked audibly away.

‘I have an hour or so left, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, Eamonn.’

Kent wrote:

My dearest wife Aine,

Not wife but widow before these lines reach you. I am here without hope of this world and without fear, calmly awaiting the end.

In the last phase of his journey, he lost the need of a veneer of cynicism to stop his weakness overwhelming him. Now, as the final seconds beat in his brain, for the first time in a long while he seemed to become what his friend Stephen MacKenna once called him, a kind of remote, tranquil harvest moon. He recalled the sweet days of his courtship when he had a pet name for Aine.

Dearest ‘silly little Fanny’. My poor little sweetheart of – how many – years ago. Ever my comforter, God comfort you now.

What can I say? I die a noble death, for Ireland’s freedom. Men and women will vie with one another to shake your dear hand. Be proud of me as I am and ever was of you. My cold exterior was but a mask. It has saved me in these last days.

You have a duty to me and to Ronan, that is, to live. You will be – you are, the wife of one of the Leaders of the Revolution. Sweeter still you are my little child, my dearest pet, my sweetheart of the hawthorn bushes and Summer’s eves.

I remember all and I banish all that I may be strong and die bravely. I have one hour to live, then God’s judgement.

Adieu, Eamonn.

When Father Augustine came back from seeing Mallin two cells away, he and Kent called on every Irish saint they could remember, Patrick and Brigid, Columba and Colmcille, Kevin and Enda, and a host of others.

‘You will be meeting them soon,’ Father Augustine said, ‘so I do not want to embarrass you by letting you forget the name of any one of them.’

He gave Kent his crucifix.

‘Keep this, Eamonn, and I will be with you to the last.’

It was 3.20 a.m.

Father Albert, sweat beading his high forehead, had also circulated among the condemned and was now with Heuston, listed first of the four to be shot. Sean was in his greatcoat, for it was a cold morning. The stub of a candle was burned out. He was kneeling beside a table, his rosary in his hands.

For the last fifteen minutes, he and Father Albert knelt to pray in a darkness that seemed to bind them and the world into one.

Heuston seemed not to mind that every basic kindness had been withdrawn from him and that, at twenty-five, he was about to die. He spoke in anticipation of meeting Patrick Pearse and the other leaders who had gone before. It struck the friar forcibly that these men were aware that their deaths were not solitary events but part of a blessed brotherhood.

They repeated over and over the prayer Heuston liked best: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with you. Amen.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Heuston. It’s time.’

As they went down to the open space whence the corridor ran into the Yard, Sean said, ‘Remember me, Father, to all my friends in the Fianna, to Michael Staines and to all the boys in Blackhall Street.’

His hands were pinioned behind his back. He was blindfolded. A piece of paper, four inches by five, was pinned to his greatcoat above his heart. Things were moving to the end with surprising suddenness.

Out of the corner of his eye, Father Albert saw Mallin approaching, assisted by Father Augustine. He put a small cross to Heuston’s lips and the young man kissed the Crucified, whispering, ‘You won’t forget to anoint me, Father.’

The priest squeezed his arm. ‘Of course not, Sean.’

The guard held Sean’s left arm, Father Albert his right.

Outside in a bluish granular dawn was the firing squad for Mallin. Some were smoking nervously, feeling a big giddy, their knuckles gleaming like knobs of ivory. Others, not wanting to be noticed, drifted off to the toilet.

In the Stonebreakers’ Yard, was a second detachment, some standing, others kneeling.

Sean and Father Albert were led to the end where there was a soap box. Sean was seated on it. With perfect calmness, he said with the priest, ‘My Jesus, mercy.’

The priest moved away, feeling the grandeur, unlike any other, of a man dying freely, deliberately in the spring of his years.

The volley broke into his reverie. As he stumbled on feet of iron to keep his promise to Sean, he felt not sad but exalted. He would have given anything to change places with this brave young man.

As Sean’s body was dragged away, the first firing squad was replaced by the second. Father Albert waited to attend to Michael Mallin, who was murmuring the Hail Mary.

Father Augustine was at the preparation point. His left arm was entwined in Con Colbert’s right as he whispered last words in the lad’s ear.

A young soldier started to pin a piece of white paper rather low on Colbert’s breast. Over his head, Con said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to pin it up higher, nearer the heart?’

The soldier muttered, ‘This’ll do.’ Then: ‘Now give me your hand, mate.’

Colbert shrugged, and extended his left hand.

The soldier said, ‘No, the other one.’

Colbert extended his right and the soldier grasped it and shook it warmly.

As the volley rang out that ended Mallin’s life, the soldier blindfolded Con’s eyes and pinned his hands behind his back. ‘Good luck, mate,’ he said.

Moments later, an NCO called out, ‘Colbert.’

Father Augustine still had his arm through Con’s – ‘Hold tight to God’s sleeve, lad,’ he whispered – and now, with Father Albert arriving breathless to take the lad’s left hand, they entered the corridor lit only by a lamp carried by a soldier. Though Con was shaking and his legs felt they belonged to someone else, his lips were moving in prayer as he went before the firing squad.

Father Augustine, on the treadmill of death, left his colleague to anoint the body and rushed back to find Kent being led towards him down the hall. His heart went out to embrace this gallant man. And together they walked to the Stonebreakers’ Yard.

Kent, too, dry-mouthed, heart pumping, knees jerking, was made to sit on the soap box to await his view of God’s face.

Only when Father Augustine rushed to anoint him did he notice that in Kent’s bound hands was his crucifix. He withdrew it to find the figure on the cross was spattered with blood.

‘More exe-cut-ions!’

The Connolly girls had been trying to get their mother to sleep when she came to with a start at the newsvendor’s cry. Nora went out to learn the names of the new dead.

Lillie was in a state of exhaustion when she turned up at the Castle with little Fiona to see her husband. The Grand Staircase up which she was conducted had an armed guard on practically every step. Outside the room in the Royal Corridor, a nurse was ordered to search her.

‘Pardon me,’ Lillie said, ‘but what are you looking for?’

‘A knife or maybe poison, in case the prisoner tries to commit suicide.’

Lillie laughed thinly. ‘That proves how little you know James Connolly. Otherwise you wouldn’t dream of suggesting that to avoid a little pain—’

‘A lot of pain,’ the nurse interrupted, kindly.

‘All right,’ Lillie said, dampening down, ‘a lot of pain. But as long as there’s life in him, he’ll go on fighting.’

The first thing she saw on entering was the cage that kept the bedclothes off his leg. One glance at him and she knew the nurse was not exaggerating.

He was pale, there were circles under his eyes, his mouth was strangely twisted. And she had never seen him so skinny. He tried to lift himself off his pillow but could not.

She pressed her lips to his, feeling the familiar tickle of his moustache; and he stroked her dark hair, now streaked with grey, murmuring, ‘Lillie, Lillie.’

He said he was being well looked after. The civilian surgeon, Tobin, had even crossed to London to try and find a remedy for the spread of gangrene in his body.

‘And, James?’

‘Nothing has worked so far.’

Somehow, Lillie found that reassuring.

When Madge and Laura came across their sister, she was very white. Laura whispered, ‘She’s not at all well.’

The day before an official had handed Kattie her husband’s effects: glasses’ case, pencil, post office book with seven stamps in it, knife, a pound note taken from him at the Rotunda. It was like being presented with his severed limbs.

Before her sisters could speak, Kattie said, in a hollow voice, ‘In the night … I lost … the baby.’

‘Oh, Kattie!’ Madge said, ‘I’ll fetch a doctor.’

‘No need. I can handle it.’

They decided it was best to leave her alone.

Kattie had never felt so empty. First, her heart, and now her body, empty.

In London, Nathan received a letter from George Bernard Shaw.

‘My dear Sir Matthew,’ he wrote, ‘I congratulate you on coming in for the best rebellion for 118 years, probably the last chance of such an experience.’

Shaw suggested that Birrell’s best defence was that he could only have avoided the danger ‘by impartially disarming the population. As he was not enabled to do this, he was not in a position to conclude that any section of the population could run amok like lunatics.’

Shaw had one regret.

‘Why, oh why didn’t the artillery knock down half Dublin whilst it had the chance? Think of the insanitary areas, the slums, the glorious chance of making a clean sweep of them! Only 179 houses and probably at least nine of them quite decent ones. I’d have laid at least 17,900 of them flat and made a decent town of it!’

Nathan chuckled. Shaw was right about one thing. Had they tried to disarm the Volunteers north or south, they would have had not a six-day but perhaps a six-months’ war. As if they had failed where others might had succeeded! As if there were not problems to which no solutions exist!

Not one sign pointed to a rising on that Monday. But wasn’t there talk of a rising? the critics would ask. There was never talk of anything else, that was the trouble. The peculiarity of the Easter Rising was, it was at once the most public and most secret of all rebellions. Connolly was always ‘taking the Castle’ in practice, then left it alone when it was at his mercy.

How could anyone predict anything as illogical as that?

A guard unlocked an isolation cell in the Tower of London in a panic. ‘I need help here,’ he hollered.

The prisoner was near to death. His forehead was cold and clammy, his eyes rolled in his head, his pulse was barely perceptible.

Sir Roger Casement was rushed to the hospital wing where the doctor immediately diagnosed poisoning. He pushed a tube down his throat and pumped his stomach. It went on for over an hour before the doctor said, ‘He’ll live.’

For days on end, Casement had been completely isolated. Even the soldiers guarding him were forbidden to utter a single word, though a Welsh corporal did whisper that the leaders of the Dublin rising were being executed.

‘I don’t care whether it’s against orders, sir,’ he said with a lilt. ‘I want you to know that lots of us are very sorry about this and I ’ope you get off. We think you are a brave man, sir.’

He was never on duty again.

Before the rising, Casement had been considered a curiosity, afterwards, the worst traitor of the war.

He had not heard a word from any of his friends. The Governor said they were all too disgusted. In fact, Gertrude had been trying for days to visit him. She had been shunted from Scotland Yard to the Ministry of War to the Home Office. She had written Roger a letter, telling him how much they all loved him and were praying for him. The Governor withheld it.

She took to walking around the Tower, trying to communicate with him through the walls. Hearing rumours that he was to be shot, she had written to Asquith but he had not replied.

To ease the pain and the loneliness, to try to banish the ghosts inside his brain, Casement tried to kill himself. He tried swallowing a bent nail, then rubbing curare, used by South American Indians to poison their arrows, into his veins. Finally, he swallowed all the curare he had.

After the use of the stomach-pump, he had to bear two silent soldiers in his cell, with a third outside looking every minute through the Judas-hole. The electric light was never switched off so that he did not know the day or the hour; and he, the most private of men, could not sleep or even think.

In deep depression, he saw his suicide attempt as just one more in a long line of failures.

Gertrude finally contacted an Irish lawyer, George Gavan Duffy, who was sympathetic to Sinn Fein. He promised to take up Casement’s defence. After a week of negotiation, he was allowed to visit him.

Casement’s beard was only half-grown, giving him a neglected look. His blood-red eyes were blurred, his lids too heavy to fully lift, the sides of his face frozen as after a stroke, and his fingers were bunched, almost welded together. Dark thoughts were evidently serpentining his brain. His lower lip was turned out, a glossy purple.

He peered at Gavan Duffy as at a distant object. When asked questions, he paused for a long time, seeming to have to invent language. His speech was breathless, hesitant; he had a slight stammer. It was hard for him to remember names or dates.

Gavan Duffy noticed the untreated bites on his hands, face and neck. His clothes were foetid. This most fastidious of men was still in the same sea-soiled suit he wore when picked up on Banna Strand; the dried slime showed. His brittle laceless boots were draped around his ankles. With nothing to support his trousers, he kept hitching them up nervously.

‘When were you last allowed out for a walk, Sir Roger?’

Casement shook his head like a dog out of a pond.

‘You mean you have never been allowed out?’

Another shake of the head.

The lawyer felt desperate to scratch himself. The cell was verminous.

He promised to procure writing material. ‘Write notes to refresh your memory. It will help me in your defence.’

Casement mumbled that he wanted to be treated the same as his friends in Dublin. ‘Military tribunal.’ Then, in a low tremulous voice: ‘Can’t they shoot me, too?’

Duffy went from the Tower to see Gertrude and Mrs Green. He had met Casement, he said, but he could not be sure this wreck was the same man.

Mrs Green wrote a letter at once to the PM, telling him of Casement’s condition and threatening, if nothing was done at once, to send accounts of his maltreatment to American papers.

Asquith was genuinely upset. He told his secretary to phone Major Arbuthnot of the Life Guards at Whitehall. From now on, Sir Roger Casement was to be treated decently.

At 2 that Monday afternoon, de Valera went before a court martial. It was brief and to the point.

‘Can you tell us where you were born?’

‘New York,’ he replied. ‘But I do not know if my father was a Spanish subject or a naturalized American. I have always regarded myself as an Irishman and not a British subject.’

Captain Hitzen testified that de Valera was the one who surrendered in Boland’s Mill and that the Sinn Feiners there regarded him as their senior officer.

Cadet Mackay said he had been well treated while he was de Valera’s prisoner.

After the trial and verdict of guilty, he was conducted to the now notorious Kilmainham Jail.

John Dillon had been hearing that the conduct of the rebels during the rising was magnificent. These were no ne’er-do-wells, no criminals.

He had also received reports of a massacre of civilians in North King Street. He kept saying, ‘Cromwell is risen from the dead and is stalking the land again.’

Everywhere now, in streets, pubs, pulpits, people were saying, ‘Didn’t those men love Ireland?’ ‘Really, we never knew it was worth dying for!’ ‘Yes, they made mistakes but aren’t they Irishmen, and aren’t the British, as usual, murdering them without a fair trial?’ ‘Jasus, these brave men are not a lot of foreigners, they’re our own.’ ‘They might have been traitors to Britain but they weren’t traitors to Ireland, not by a long chalk.’

Perched on bar stools, their noses dipped in perpetual mourning, the great philosophers were saying, ‘Dear Lord, rebels, hunger-strikers, traitors, once they’re dying or dead, don’t we rush to claim them as our own?’ One Dublin waitress said, ‘They don’t shoot German prisoners, although they call them “Huns” and “baby-killers”; they only shoot our brave Irish boys.’

In O’Connell Street, one elderly black-shawled lady, with eyes swollen from mourning her only son, asked, ‘Could the Germans have done worse?’ and her companion said, ‘But the English don’t hate the Germans, Maura, not the way they hate us.’

Children were collecting cheap prints of the leaders of the rising.

Lady Fingall told a friend, ‘It’s like seeing a continuous trickle of blood coming from under a locked door.’

Already that most feared of critics, the back-street balladeer, was writing songs that were being sung the length and breadth of Ireland.

Priests were making a good living out of saying masses for dead rebels whose names were read out from pulpit after pulpit.

The Irish, by and large, hated violence, which was why most were in principle against the rising. But now a new consciousness was dawning nationwide: what the rebels did was the violence of the brave; what was being done to them was the violence of the coward. Most ominously for the future, in Limerick, Cork and Tralee, a silent rage was deepened by their sense of guilt that the men of Dublin had risen and they had not.

Dillon was furious that he had got nowhere with Maxwell. He was trying to make villains out of Irishmen by shooting them on Irish soil. He might, while he was at it, square the circle!

Stories of maltreatment were multiplying.

Even lads had been put up against a wall for refusing to inform on their leaders; the officer in charge only stopped the firing squad at the last second.

One fifteen-year-old rebel, on being told that he had only half an hour to live, said, ‘Shoot away.’ They blindfolded him, pressed his back to the Barrack wall. There was the click of the safety catch being lifted. ‘Last chance.’ ‘No!’ They removed the blindfold and sent him home to his mother.

What finally made Dillon determined to take on the Administration was when he met with Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

She told him in detail how Skeffy had been shot in cold blood and the murderer made second in command of Portobello Barracks.

Deeply moved, Dillon said, ‘My dear, I intend to see to it that the whole of Britain, the whole world knows about your husband’s murder.’ He adjusted his pince-nez. ‘I intend to address the House of Commons.’

In the condemned cell, de Valera decided not to write to his mother or his wife until his death-sentence was confirmed.

His mind went back to Bruree, County Limerick, and his boyhood days. He was remembering his grandmother and his uncle Pat and the brook he used to follow from Drumacummer to Trinity Well at its source in Dromin. He recalled every road and bush and bird along the way.

He imagined himself on top of Knockdoha looking north towards Tory Hill, east towards Kilmallock, south to the Ballyhoura Hills, west to the mountains of Limerick.

He was a boy again, spending all day sometimes with the cows, feeding them hay and cutting buckets of turnips for them in the evening. And he was listening to Fr Eugene Sheehy preaching the boycott while he, in cassock and cotta, sat on the step beside the altar.

He thought especially of beautiful Sinead Flanagan who taught him Irish and became his wife. And even as his long face grew longer there was a shining in his eye.

He wrote to the nun in charge of the Training College where he taught, Sister Gonzaga.

I have just been told that I am to be shot for my part in the rebellion.

Just a parting line then to thank you and all the Sisters (especially Mother Attracta) for your unvarying kindness to me in the past and to ask you to pray for my soul and for my poor wife and little children whom I leave unprovided for.

Ask the girls to remember me in their prayers.

Goodbye. I hope I’ll be in heaven to meet you.

As darkness came to Richmond Barracks, in a crowded smelly cell on Block L, Row 6, prisoners were telling McDermott, ‘They won’t shoot you, Sean.’

He shook his head. ‘Sean Heuston and Con Colbert were and they didn’t even sign the Proclamation. Only Connolly and myself of the signatories are left.’ He seemed not in the least concerned as he added, ‘The British will shoot us both.’

Not long after they had settled down for the night, an officer came to the door. ‘Is John McDermott here?’

Sean awoke, rose and limped to meet him. ‘Yes?’

The officer handed him a slip of paper. He was being charged with taking part in an armed rebellion.

‘Court martial at 11 in the morning.’

His fellow-prisoners surrounded him, noisily. ‘That doesn’t mean a thing, Sean.’

He refused to discuss it. ‘This calls for a concert, lads.’

On the parade ground, the officer who had just delivered the notice of certain death, heard rebel songs and the harsh, unmistakable tones of Sean McDermott.

I am Brian Boy McGhee,

My father was Owen Ban,

I was awakened from happy dreams

By the shouts of my startled clan.

As dawn approached on Tuesday, 9 May, the Chaplain of Cork Military Hospital arrived at Cork Detention Barracks.

‘Father John Sexton,’ he said, ‘to see the prisoner, Kent.’

Fifty-one-year-old, black-haired, black-bearded Tom Kent, court-martialled on the 4th for the murder of Head Constable Rowe, greeted him warmly.

‘Any news of Richard, Father?’

Father Sexton lowered his eyes. ‘I thought they—. Your brother died of his wounds two days after he was taken.’

Tom signed himself, saying, ‘May he rest in peace.’

He handed the Chaplain his temperance badge.

‘ ’Tis for Father Ahearne of Castlelyons. From him I got it and I wish it to be returned untarnished to him.’

Father Sexton said, ‘He will be pleased to get it, Tom.’

He handed Kent a rosary.

It was still in Kent’s bound hands when the Chaplain stooped to anoint his bullet-ridden corpse.

The news of Kent’s execution was communicated to Maxwell before breakfast. He telegraphed the Prime Minister that of the ring-leaders only Connolly and McDermott remained to be tried.

‘If convicted they must suffer the extreme penalty. They will be the last to suffer capital punishment, as far as I can now state.’

He told his staff, ‘That will be the end of the so-called Government of the Republic. I assure you, gentlemen, no more will be heard ever again of an Irish rising of 1916.’

It was rare for Sean McDermott to ask a favour of an Englishman but he begged a Tommy for the loan of a razor.

After shaving, he ran his hand over his cheek. ‘I want to make a nice corpse, men.’

As the escort unbolted the door, Sean shook hands with each of his comrades.

‘Pray for me at dawn.’

After his trial, he was taken to Kilmainham where he was told the Commander-in-Chief had already confirmed his sentence.

Though the Castle’s medical staff strongly disapproved of Connolly’s part in the rising, he was treated with professionalism and the utmost personal kindness.

That day, Surgeon Tobin whispered to a nurse, ‘His leg is not responding to treatment.’

The nurse whispered back, ‘He’s in agony all the time.’

The surgeon nodded. ‘It’ll have to come off, I’m afraid.’

He went to brief a senior officer on what had to be done.

The officer said, ‘That isn’t necessary.’

‘I assure you, sir, it is.’

‘Take it from me, Mr Tobin,’ the officer said, meaningfully, ‘it isn’t.’

*

At the Viceregal Lodge, someone else was for the chop.

Lord Basil Blackwood, who was not a vindictive man, entered Lord Wimborne’s study.

With distinct pleasure, he said, ‘Excellency, a message has just come in from the Cabinet in London.’

Wimborne smiled. ‘Oh?’

‘They are asking for your—’

‘Not my resignation?’

An hour later, still white with fury, Wimborne dictated his reply in formal terms that stuck in his throat.

He then poured himself a brandy that was stiff even by his stern standards.

A young nurse was told, ‘Prepare the prisoner, Connolly, for court martial.’

She could hardly believe it. He was so ill, and, anyway, so nice. Many a time she had heard him and Surgeon Tobin swap poems and joke together. Everyone liked him; they just could not understand what had made him a rebel.

Having eased him on to the pillow, she washed his face and combed his hair.

‘What’s this for, nurse?’ When she did not answer, he said, ‘So it’s my turn.’

‘I’ll see if I can get you some clean pyjamas.’

In a cupboard she found a brand new pair and helped him struggle into them.

As he gritted his teeth in pain, he said, ‘I have to look my best, don’t I?’

Suddenly, the door was flung open and three officers burst in. One of them barked, ‘Nurse, wait outside.’

The President of the Court said sharply, ‘Sit up! You know what this is.’

From the horizontal, Connolly eyed him, without saying a word.

‘I told you to sit up, man.’

The young RAMC officer in the corner whispered, ‘The prisoner is dying, sir.’

‘Well,’ the officer bellowed, ‘prop him up, then.’

The nurse was called back to place pillows and a mattress in position so that he could sit upright.

His ball-shaped face white with pain, Connolly made no attempt at a defence. What was the point when they had his signature to the surrender? He strongly rejected, however, allegations that he had ill-treated PoWs.

He told the Tribunal: ‘We went out to break the connection between this country and the British Empire and to establish an Irish Republic. We believe that the call we then issued to the people of Ireland was a nobler call, in a holier cause, than any issued to them during this war, having any connection with this war.’

‘Is this really necessary?’ the President demanded.

Connolly took no notice.

‘We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are ready to die endeavouring to win for Ireland those national rights which the British government has been asking them to die to win for Belgium. As long as that remains the case, the cause of Irish freedom is safe.’

One officer yawned loudly, another tapped his watch.

‘Believing that the British government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of Irishmen, of even a respectable minority, ready to die to affirm that truth, makes the Government for ever a usurpation and a crime against human progress.

‘I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irish men and boys, and hundreds of Irish women and girls, were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives if need be.’

‘Anything else?’ demanded the President, irritably.

‘Yes,’ Connolly said, undaunted, ‘I want to see my wife and eldest daughter.’

The President gathered up his papers. ‘Granted,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’

When Nora went with her mother to the Castle, she could hardly believe her eyes. Soldiers were on guard with fixed bayonets on every step and on the Battleaxe Landing above. Were so many needed to watch over someone too ill to shift from his bed?

Before they entered, the Intelligence Officer warned them, ‘You must not talk about the rising or anything that has taken place since. Anything, you understand?’

They nodded.

A nurse, detailed to search them, only went through the motions. ‘I refuse,’ she muttered, ‘to be part of this.’

The RAMC officer never left Connolly’s room but when the wife and daughter entered, he courteously turned to the window with his back to them, reading.

Lillie hastened towards the bed, murmuring, ‘How is the pain today, James?’

‘Not too bad, Lillie.’ Never one to keep a secret, he blurted out, ‘I’ve just been court-martialled.’

Both women gasped, and Lillie moaned, ‘Then they’re—’

‘Dad’s a sick man,’ Nora cut in.

‘If they can court-martial him, why won’t they kill him?’

Connolly waved speculation aside. He told them how he came by his injury and how the medics couldn’t staunch the blood. He praised the bravery of the lad who shielded him with his body when they left the GPO.

‘We can’t fail after things like that, can we?’

His chief concern was his family. So many girls. Owing to his many activities, he had not given them much of a life.

‘Listen to me, Lillie. I reckon you all ought to go back to the States.’

‘Where would we get the money?’

‘Get Skeffy to edit and publish my writings.’

With a sharp look towards the officer, Norah said, ‘He’s gone.’

‘Who? Skeffy? How?’

‘In Portobello Barracks.’

‘That’s enough,’ the young officer said kindly, ‘or you’ll have to leave.’

Connolly was left pondering a few moments on this surprising news. In a barracks? Did they execute pacifists?

In an attempt to cheer them up, he said, ‘The rising will put an end to recruiting. Irishmen will realize it’s crazy fighting for the freedom of another country while we’re slaves in our own.’

Nora told him about his own son. ‘Rory was in prison.’

‘Really?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Where?’

‘Richmond Barracks. He was with Sean McDermott for eight days. He gave the soldiers the name Alfred Carne.’

Lillie said anxiously, ‘He’s under sixteen, so they would have let him go anyway.’

Connolly chuckled. ‘Imagine, he’s fought for his country, been in prison for his country and he’s not sixteen. He’s had a great start in life, hasn’t he?’

Nora told him about her long and fruitless walk with Ina from Ulster.

‘So,’ she concluded, sighing, ‘all I did was carry messages.’

His eyes brimmed with pride again as he squeezed her hand.

‘My little woman did as much as any of us. If you hadn’t come down from the North I might not have persuaded the leaders to fight.’

One thing still bothered him.

‘Skeffy, dead?’ He asked it voicelessly.

Nora mouthed back, ‘Murdered. By a drunken officer.’

With words that escaped her, she added, ‘There’s only you and Sean McDermott left.’

Nothing had ever jolted Connolly so much. No one in the Castle had hinted at anything like that.’

‘All of them gone?’

Nora nodded. More to console her mother, she said, ‘But they won’t shoot you, Daddy, not a wounded man.’

He racked his brain. ‘During the Boer War, the British captured a prisoner wounded just like me. Name of Scheepers. In a farmhouse. They court-martialled him,’ – his voice dipped – ‘then they shot him in a chair.’

Lillie passed her hand over her throbbing forehead.

Connolly gestured for Nora to put her hand under the bed covers. Into it he placed a compressed piece of paper.

‘My defence at my trial,’ he whispered. ‘See it gets out safely.’

Feeling his rough warm skin, Nora was suddenly a child again.

‘Daddy mine,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Daddy mine.’

When they left, Nora held the paper in her clenched hand while she was being searched. She would have fought the entire British army on her own to keep it.

At Kilmainham Hospital, Maxwell was composing a report to the Prime Minister.

He was far from being the stereotype of the dumb and vicious soldier. Everything in Ireland, he realized, was thirty years too late. The rebellion happened because Home Rule had been put on the long finger at Westminster. From then on, those who backed the ballot rather than the bullet were finished.

If there were an election, he predicted, Redmond’s party would lose out massively to the men of violence. The Masses and the grand funerals, the badges and the banners, all pointed the way of Sinn Fein.

Moreover, there was not now the remotest possibility that Ulster would consent to be governed by a treacherous crowd in the south, nor could mainland Britain ask it of them. By demanding a Republic in blood, the rebels had signed and sealed the partition of Ireland.

Maxwell even sensed that, sooner or later, he would be blamed for the troubles ahead. Setting politics aside, he told Asquith that his policy had been not to confirm any death sentence unless he had overwhelming evidence that the prisoner was either a leader or a rebel commander who had shot down His Majesty’s troops or subjects.

He answered the PM’s query about Connolly and McDermott by saying that since they were ring-leaders, it would be both illogical and unjust not to execute them.

He had set the date: 11 May.

‘It is hoped that these examples will be sufficient to act as a deterrent to intriguers and to bring home to them that the murder of His Majesty’s subjects or other acts calculated to imperil the safety of the realm will not be tolerated.’

When Asquith read the letter, he saw that its icy logic was irrefutable. But it was the logic of a soldier.

Sometimes, unhappily, the pursuit of justice led only to more injustice, and the passion for order ended in chaos.

The London Daily News on 10 May set the tone for the day. It featured an article by Bernard Shaw.

Dillon read it. Redmond read it. More importantly, the PM read it.

Shaw’s view was that the Irishmen who had been recently shot in cold blood after capture or surrender were prisoners of war. It was, therefore, wrong to slaughter them. Without their own national government, these men considered themselves occupied by a foreign power. They were only doing what Englishmen would do if England were overrun by Germany. Each one knew he would be killed if they were beaten.

This danger only adds in the same measure to his glory in the eyes of his compatriots and of the disinterested admirers of patriotism throughout the world.

It is absolutely impossible to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero, even though the day before the rising he may have been only a minor poet.

The Irish, he stressed, have a great tradition in these matters. In a prophetic vein, he went on:

The military authorities and the English government must have known that they were canonizing their prisoners. I remain an Irishman, and am bound to contradict any implication that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman taken in a fight for Irish Independence against the British government, which was a fair fight in everything except the enormous odds my countrymen had to face.

While civil servants in the Foreign Office were digesting this, they received confirmation of its good sense in a second cable from the Washington Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice.

Newspapers in the States, he reported, were saying the executions were incredibly stupid and were creating considerable alarm and discussion among the public.

That afternoon, the House of Commons was crammed to capacity. Even Ministers of the Crown could not get their friends tickets for the Visitors’ Gallery.

The air was buzzing with excitement as word got round that Dillon, just back from Dublin, was to address the House.

The PM and the entire Cabinet were seated when he rose on an adjournment debate to make one of the most contentious speeches in the history of the Commons.

A straight, handsome man, he adjusted his spectacles and patted his white hair into place. He claimed to speak for the entire Nationalist Party that had worked for reconciliation and Home Rule, that had encouraged Irishmen to enlist in the British army, and had indeed given thousands to death in the war. His primary aim was to stop the senseless killings in Dublin.

His magnificent voice rang all the changes. It was, by turns, scolding, beseeching, sarcastic, belligerent.

‘You are letting loose a river of blood, and, make no mistake about it, between two races who, after 300 years of hatred and strife, we had nearly succeeded in bringing together.

‘It is the first rebellion that ever took place in Ireland when you had the majority on your side. It is the fruit of our life work. We had risked our lives a hundred times to bring about this result. We are held up to odium as traitors by those men who made this rebellion; and our lives have been in danger a hundred times during the last thirty years because we have endeavoured to reconcile the two things, and now you are washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood.’

When, he demanded, his grey eyes blazing, did Englishmen ever think of Ireland except as England’s back yard?

To shouts of ‘No’ and ‘Scandalous’, and frantic waving of order papers, he went on like an avalanche:

‘I say I am proud of their courage, and, if you were not so dense and so stupid, as some of you English people are, you could have had these men fighting for you, and they are men worth having. It is not murderers who are being executed: it is insurgents who have fought a clean fight, however misguided, and’ – he glared up at the Gallery where many top-ranking officers were seated, foaming at the mouth – ‘it would have been a damned good thing for you if your soldiers were able to put up as good a fight as did these men in Dublin.’

The Chamber echoed and re-echoed with roars of anger. Some shouted, ‘What impossible people these Irish are!’

When he could make himself heard, an unrepentant Dillon compared Britain with America after the Civil War.

‘When the insurrection there was over, I do not think Abraham Lincoln executed one single man, and by that one act of clemency he did an enormous amount of good for the whole country.’

The chance of reconciliation in Ireland had been tossed aside.

‘One of the most horrible tragedies of the fighting was that brother met brother in the streets of Dublin.’

Yet even General Maxwell agreed that the soldiers, almost wholly Irish, had proved themselves utterly trustworthy.

A profound silence settled on the House as he outlined the Sheehy-Skeffington case. He had spoken with the man’s wife and checked the story out. That quaint vegetarian, that gentle pacifist had been arrested and shot in the back by a British army captain. And Maxwell refused to arrest his murderer.

The silence that attended this revelation was shattered as Dillon spoke a final word of praise for the rebels.

‘I admit they were wrong; I know they were wrong; but they fought a clean fight, and they fought with superb bravery and skill, and no act of savagery or act against the customs of war that I know of has been brought home to any leader or any organized body of insurgents.’

Dillon sat down and when the hubbub subsided, the Prime Minister rose. He addressed himself, in particular, to the case of Sheehy-Skeffington.

‘I confess I do not and cannot believe it. Does anyone suppose that Sir John Maxwell has any object in shielding officers and soldiers, if there be such, who have been guilty of such ungentlemanlike, such inhuman conduct? It is the last thing the British army would dream of!’

There were hear-hears, tapping of benches and murmurs of assent throughout the House. In the Visitors’ Gallery, the top-brass and titled ladies exchanged approving glances.

The PM took Dillon’s point about the bravery of the rebels: ‘So far as the great body of insurgents is concerned I have no hesitation in saying in public they have conducted themselves with great humanity which contrasted very much to their advantage with some of the so-called civilized enemies which we are fighting in Europe. They were young men; often lads. They were misled, almost unconsciously, I believe, into this terrible business.’

The PM had a surprise in store for the House. He himself was going to Dublin.

Carson and the Unionists were not pleased. It would look to the Sinn Feiners as if their rebelliousness was even more effective than the politicking of Nationalist politicians.

Asquith not only made immediate preparations to see for himself why the Irish administration had failed. He also said to Lord Kitchener, ‘Tell Maxwell to hold his hand for a while.’

Kitchener said, ‘What about the two executions fixed for tomorrow?’

‘Tell him to delay them. This Sheehy-Skeffington case is most worrying.’

Kitchener, who had heard the story of the murder first-hand from Major Vane, could not but agree.

Vane was back in Dublin. He had caught the night boat and spent the morning resting in the Gresham Hotel. In the afternoon, he took a cab to Skeffy’s home in Rathmines.

He had been in many a battle but this was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. Hanna had a great deal, perhaps too much, to forgive. The mere sight of khaki might make her furious.

It was a relief to find the little boy playing on his own in the front garden. The Major stood there a while watching him. Here, he sensed, was a great man in the making.

Eventually, Owen saw him and waved. So Colthurst’s brutality had not soured or frightened him.

‘Hello, sonny, my name is Vane,’ he said. ‘Francis. Like your father. I’m just back from London.’

In spite of his whiskers and plum-coloured face, the boy took to him; he liked his smile.

‘Owen, how’d you like to go to the zoo sometime?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’ Neither of them noticed that Hanna had come to the window. ‘And after the zoo, how’d you like to join me for dinner at my hotel?’

‘Yes, please, sir.’

‘We’d better ask your mommie, hadn’t we?’ Vane took the lad by the hand. ‘What would you say to a nice chicken meal?’

Owen stopped and looked up at the Major with a serious expression. ‘I don’t eat chicken, sir.’

‘I’m sorry. Why ever not?’

‘My daddy never ate meat.’

‘I see.’

After a pause, Owen added, ‘He doesn’t even eat vegetables now.’

In New York, Mollie Monteith was growing more and more worried. Still no news from Bob. She had read the list of the dead and executed in Dublin. Among them were The O’Rahilly, Tom Clarke, Ned Daly. All friends of hers. Each day she expected to see Bob’s name.

She took her two little girls and went to the office of the Gaelic American.

John Devoy, a crusty old bachelor, was not the best of comforters but he did his best.

Mollie said, ‘I read of four men in a cab driving into a river in Killarney. Only three names appeared in the paper.’ She touched her children. ‘Maybe the fourth was their father.’

Devoy became edgy. ‘Please, please, Mrs Monteith, don’t let thoughts like that get to you.’

‘But you have told me nothing.’

‘All I know is that the German submarine put three of our people on the coast of Kerry early on Good Friday. I can only presume that your husband is being taken care of by the men who were supposed to have met him with a pilot boat.’ He stood up. ‘Now, please go home, ma’am, with your little ones.’

‘Where’s Daddy, Mommy?’ said five-year-old Vie.

‘He’s alive,’ Mollie said fiercely. ‘I know he’s alive.’

At Kilmainham Hospital, Maxwell was writing a reply to Kitchener.

He could not stop coughing. He had spent long days and quite a few nights sifting the evidence against the accused. He could not get out of his head the fact that this revolt had occurred when the very existence of the Empire was under threat. Some rebels had fought without uniforms, dealt out death like reptiles and then slipped back among ordinary civilians. No wonder some atrocities on the British side had occurred. The surprising thing was there were so few.

But he had to be firm. Dublin was still smouldering and the blood of his brave boys was scarcely dry on the pavements.

It seemed that the Skeffington case was what bothered Westminster most.

He admitted: ‘The officer, Colthurst, is apparently a hot-headed Irishman and on this occasion completely lost his head.’

He assured Kitchener he was under arrest and would be court-martialled.

Later, in conference with his aides, Maxwell was in a foul mood. The PM had asked him to finish off the executions speedily and then asked for a delay on McDermott and Connolly.

‘Isn’t that typical of politicians? Left to me, the whole damn thing would have ended at dawn this morning.’

His mood did not improve when aides told him that damage to Dublin City was estimated at £2½ million, a third of the total annual revenue for the entire country. The official casualty figure was 1,351 dead or seriously wounded. 100,000 people needed government assistance to avoid starvation.

In the light of this, Maxwell composed a Proclamation. Rather late in the day, he explained that he had felt compelled to execute the known organizers of the rising.

‘It is hoped that these examples will be sufficient to act as a deterrent to intrigues, and to bring home to them that the murder of His Majesty’s liege subjects, or other acts calculated to imperil the safety of the Realm will not be tolerated.’

Prince Alexander came in with a cable from Kitchener. It read: ‘Unless you hear to the contrary from Mr Asquith you may carry out tomorrow the extreme sentence of death upon McDermott and Connolly.’

The General sighed. ‘Alex, make the necessary arrangements.’

In Cell 59 at Kilmainham Jail, de Valera still had no confirmation of his sentence. He knew his prospects were not good.

He was reading the Confessions of St Augustine when an officer arrived. He stood to attention. He had been expecting this and had prepared himself. Only the thought of leaving his wife and children without support disturbed him.

The officer read out: ‘The said Eamon de Valera is found guilty and sentenced to death.’

De Valera had vowed to himself he would not flinch, nor did he.

After fumbling in his pocket, the officer read from a second document. The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.

The prisoner was wrenched back from thoughts of bullets exploding in his belly to the realization that he was going to live, after all. The sharp switch nearly unnerved him. In spite of his madly thumping heart, he still did not flinch.

The officer turned and left, clanging the door behind him.

De Valera sat down on the stool, took up his book and read a passage he had underlined: ‘Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.’

De Valera was a commandant. When news of his reprieve spread, there was a general sense of relief that the killings were over. At street-corners, people smiled again. There were only two rebel leaders left. Surely, even ‘Bloody Maxwell’ would not shoot a cripple and a wounded man.

In the Tower of London, Casement was looking better. Gertrude had visited him and brought him, apologetically, a suit off the peg.

He thanked her for what he now knew was her on-going concern. He was only afraid she might lose her teaching job because of him.

He had combed his growing beard, was recovering his majestically straight back, his distinguished appearance. If only he could get rid of those tiger-toothed lice in his hair.

It had been good talking to a friend after the long silence. He was pleased that a fund had been opened to pay for his defence, even though the outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion.

Well versed in Irish history, he knew that hanging would be his final consecration in the eyes of his compatriots. He might not go to heaven from a British scaffold but he would certainly go from there, with shiny halo, straight into the pantheon of Irish demi-gods.

One thing still bothered him. He could not reconcile himself to the fact that loyal Irishmen had rebelled against MacNeill’s express command.

Already, he was making notes for his trial.

‘Loyalty,’ he scribbled, ‘is a sentiment, not a law. It rests on love, not on restraint. The Government of Ireland by England rests on restraint and not on law; and since it demands no love it can evoke no loyalty.’

He reflected on how the English for centuries had appropriated French territory but they never executed Frenchmen for fighting to recover it.

‘They did not assassinate them by law. Judicial assassination today is reserved only for one race of the King’s subjects, for Irishmen; for those who cannot forget their allegiance to Ireland.’

Gripping his imagination was the green sea-girt land of his birth. Never would he see her again. But at least he, like his Dublin comrades, could die for her.

In Ireland alone in this twentieth century is loyalty held to be a crime. If we are to be indicted as criminals, to be shot as murderers, to be imprisoned as convicts because our offence is that we love Ireland more than we value our lives, then I know not what virtue resides in any offer of self-government held out to brave men on such terms.

Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth; a thing no more doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself – than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers, or to love our kind.

It is only from the convict these things are withheld for crimes committed or proven – and Ireland, that has wronged no man, that has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others – Ireland is treated today among the nations of the world as if she was a convicted criminal.

If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel, and shall cling to my ‘rebellion’ with the last drop of my blood.

Casement’s views were now part of orthodoxy in Ireland. Forgotten were the inconveniences of the brief rebellion. The man- and woman-in-the-street were only beginning to discover who these men were whom the British were secretly executing.

Pearse was a schoolmaster, and by all accounts a grand one. And Clarke, now, he was a tobacconist whom the English had put in solitary for year after year. And MacDonagh was a lecturer in the National University, a family man who had never been heard to utter an unkind word. Not the usual crowd of plotters and mischief-makers, but idealists like Emmet and Tone.

Presently, there was James Connolly. True, few Irish folk had ever heard of him except when priests cursed him from the altar but wasn’t he a prisoner, for heaven’s sake, in that godless hole, the Castle? And he loved the poor, they say, as much as bold Jim Larkin.

The sentiment was growing like a tide that the rebels were wrong, but not as wrong as the situation that made them rebel. And their shooting soldiers better armed and trained than themselves was nowhere near as bad as soldiers murdering them in cold blood without a fair trial and no chance to explain why they took up arms.

Late that Thursday afternoon, Father Aloysius was called to Connolly again.

He could not believe there would be any more executions. People were sick of them. Maxwell’s Proclamations made it plain that court martials were practically over. There was Shaw’s article. There was Dillon’s speech in the Commons and the Prime Minister’s courteous response. And Connolly was a wounded man.

Father Aloysius found him no better than before, though he seemed easier in his mind.

For reasons he could not fathom, the priest was disturbed. After the visit, he was walking through the Castle Gate when he turned on his heels. He had to know if Connolly was going to be shot or not.

He asked for Captain Stanley.

The kind young officer said, ‘Don’t upset yourself, Padre. The PM would not possibly permit executions pending the debate in the House this evening.’

The friar found this very sensible. Why, then, could he not shake off this grim sense of foreboding?

He was back at the friary at 7 p.m. He took supper with his brethren and settled down in his room to pray for Connolly and his friend, McDermott.

In Kilmainham, Sean was told he was to be shot at dawn.

Immensely calm, he wrote to his brothers and sisters.

By the time this reaches you, I will, with God’s mercy, have joined in heaven my poor father and mother as well as my dear friends who have been shot during the week. They died like heroes and with God’s help I will act throughout as heroic as they did.

He assured his family he had had priest friends constantly with him over the last twenty-four hours.

I feel a happiness the like of which I never experienced in my life before. You ought to envy me. The cause for which I die has been re-baptized during the past week by blood of as good men as ever trod God’s earth.

He asked them to contact his friends.

Tell them that in my last hours I am the same Sean they always knew and that even now I can enjoy a laugh as good as ever.

Goodbye, dear Brothers and Sisters, make no lament for me. Pray for my soul and feel a lasting pride in my death. I die that the Irish nation may live.

God bless and guard you all and may He have mercy on my soul. Yours as ever, Sean.

At 9 o’clock, Father Aloysius’s devotions were interrupted. A Brother knocked to say an officer was waiting downstairs.

By a curious twist, the bearer of bad news was Captain Stanley. He stood in the hallway, cap in hand, sad-looking, shuffling his feet.

‘Just to say, Padre, your services will be required at two in the morning.’

‘It’s not—?’

‘Sorry. I’m not allowed to say another word.’

There was no point in Father Aloysius trying to sleep. He had witnessed many painful things in the last few days. There were tales of atrocity in North King Street worse even than anything he had seen. Connolly’s death was just one more pointless addition to the litany.

Having finished his divine office, he remained kneeling on his prie-dieu in front of the crucified Christ which had been sprinkled with Pearse’s blood and now bore his name.

At 11 p.m., Connolly was woken up. For a while, he could not grasp what they were doing to him.

An officer said, ‘Sorry to disturb you, but—. Are you awake?’

Connolly yawned. ‘Yes.’

‘You are to be shot at dawn.’

With the return of the shrieking pain, Connolly’s first reaction was, Bullets are better than morphine. Then, in full possession of his wits, he asked, ‘My wife?’

‘Don’t worry. Your wife and daughter are being sent for.’

At midnight, McDermott had visitors. Phyllis and Mary Ryan had been driven from Drumcondra. They entered his cell to see a board at the end for a bed, a chair and, on the table, a yellow candle in a metal candlestick. The candle kept spluttering and flaring up.

He gave them both a big hug. ‘Can you stay long?’

‘Yes,’ they said.

They sat down together on the board, Sean in the middle with an arm around each of them.

For the girls it was unreal. It was like old times when they had talked the night away.

At one in the morning, a motor ambulance drew up outside Bill O’Brien’s house.

An officer said, ‘A message from the Castle. James Connolly is unwell and wishes to see his wife and eldest daughter.’

Lillie believed it. James had lost a lot of blood. He had been weak, in pain and could not sleep without morphine.

But Nora knew.

Lillie asked, ‘Are they going to shoot my man, sir?’

‘I know absolutely nothing, ma’am.’

With the curfew still in force, Dublin was dark and deserted. O’Connell Street had a haunted look and still reeked of burning.

Nora refused to be reconciled to all those armed men on the stairs and outside the room where her father lay.

As the two women entered, Connolly turned his head, painfully. ‘Well, Lillie, I suppose you know what this means?’

She had tried so hard to fool herself this was just another visit.

‘Oh no, James,’ she exclaimed, ‘not that.’

He spoke of the irony of being woken up after his first natural sleep in nights. At which Lillie put her face on the bed and cried. He patted her head, her heaving shoulders. This man who had hardened his heart so often to do the task fate imposed on him was now overwhelmed with compassion. He remembered his lovely Lillie when they were young. She always wore black. So long was her dark hair that when she brushed it, it reached down to her hips and, ah, those fairy curls at the base of her neck.

She was better educated than he was; and he had relied on her in the beginning to correct his grammar and punctuation.

Dear Lillie, how much the labours of his life had cost her, and she never complained. The poverty, the endless grind to make ends meet; the feeling of never being settled anywhere for more than a few years; the nights when he had gone out and she wondered if he would come back alive; his belonging to the Union or the Rebellion, so that she was mostly left alone with a large family trying to cope; the long periods when they had to be apart, living separately abroad, even.

Most painful of all was something that happened early in their marriage when he had gone ahead to America. He went, so happy, to pick them up at Ellis Island. Too happy, for it was only when he counted them that he realized one was missing. His eldest daughter, Mona. ‘Where is she?’ he asked in a strangled voice. And Lillie, wide-eyed, said, ‘Didn’t you get my cable?’ ‘No!’ The anguish was rising in him, so he almost screamed, ‘Where is my Mona?’ ‘Dead, James.’ And his joy, as so often in his life, turned to ashes.

The story took little telling.

One afternoon, Lillie had left Mona with a sister. Her clothes had caught alight and she was burned all over, except for her lovely head. She had taken twenty-four hours to die, conscious all the time. And he had blamed himself for not being there, for not being able to take her hand, or stroke her forehead, and tell her how much he loved her.

Whenever lately he had thought of his darling little Mona he did not feel the pain in his leg at all, nor the poison that was racing through his body.

Now a fresh sorrow: knowing Lillie would have to bear another death, his, without him being there to comfort her.

‘Look, Lillie,’ he said, in desperation, ‘please don’t cry, or you’ll make me cry.’

‘But your life, James.’ Her words were muffled in the bed covers. ‘Your beautiful life.’

He stroked her hair. ‘Well, Lillie, hasn’t it been a full life and isn’t this a good end?’

Nora was crying, too. Her father saw how his daughter’s fierce dark eyes were darker still with mourning. He pleaded with her, ‘Don’t you cry, there’s nothing to cry about.’

‘I won’t cry, Papa.’

He patted her hand. ‘That’s my brave girl.’

The officer looked at his watch. ‘Five more minutes.’

Lillie nearly passed out. Sister Sullivan brought a glass of water to revive her.

Connolly tried to clasp his wife in his arms, but he could only lift his head and shoulders a little. So the couple held hands until the officer made them jump with ‘Time’s up.’

Connolly said softly, ‘Goodbye, Lillie,’ but her head was so heavy she could not raise it off the bed. Nora tried to lift her but even she couldn’t. The Sister took Lillie by the shoulder and helped her in a daze out of the room.

Nora was at the door when her father, his face screwed up with pain and longing, beckoned to her. She ran back and he put his arms round her and pulled her to him and hugged her. In her ear, as though it were a prophecy certain to be fulfilled, he whispered, ‘Don’t be too disappointed, Nora. We shall rise again.’

Proudly, without tears, she backed away and blew him a kiss as the officer closed the door.

For the first and only time, James Connolly, tough Union boss, rugged campaigner, military Commander of the Dublin Division of the Republican army, broke down and cried.

Outside, Lillie moaned, ‘I forgot to take a lock of his hair,’ and Sister Sullivan promised to send her one in the morning.

After swathing Connolly’s leg with bandages to cushion it for the journey to the jail, she snipped a lock of his hair and put it in an envelope with a note.

‘Dear Mrs Connolly, Enclosed you will find that which you asked me to get for you last night. I offer you my sincere sympathy in your great trouble.’

The ambulance took Lillie and Nora home through silent streets to a silent house. All the children were abed, not knowing what was happening.

The ambulance went on to Church Street where it picked up Fathers Aloysius and Sebastian and drove them to the Castle.

Father Aloysius went up, heard Connolly’s confession and gave him Holy Communion.

The officer said, ‘You’ll have to leave now, Padre. The prisoner has to be fed.’

The friar, shattered by this paradox, joined his confrère in the Castle Yard. There was a cold wind blowing.

For three hours, Sean and the Ryan sisters had talked and laughed without stop about everything: friends and foes, those in the rising and those who were not. They were so high-spirited, the soldier on guard was puzzled.

Their revels ended when an officer put his head round the door and nodded.

Sean wanted to send his friends a small souvenir. He asked the officer if, as a last wish, he might borrow a penknife. With it, he scratched on the inside of his cigarette case, ‘Sean McD 12–5–16.’

‘That,’ he said, ‘is for my brother, Jim.’

The girls picked a few pennies from their purses. Sean scratched on them and on the buttons of his coat – ‘I’ve no more use for them,’ he laughed – his initials, ‘S McD.’

‘Still not enough for all my friends.’

At 3 a.m., the Chaplain, Father McCarthy, came. The girls jumped up. It suddenly hit them that in minutes, dear, irrepressible Sean would be dead. Phyllis kissed him, then Mary held him very close, trying to imprint on her mind what his body felt like, every curve and muscle of it.

His parting words were, ‘We never thought it would end like this, that this would be the end.’

When the girls had gone, Father McCarthy gave him the sacraments.

At 3.30 a.m., Sean penned his last defiant letter:

I, Sean Mac Diarmada, before paying the penalty of death for my love of Ireland, and abhorrence of her slavery, desire to make known to all my fellow-countrymen that I die, as I have lived, bearing no malice to any man, and in perfect peace with Almighty God.

The principles for which I give my life are so sacred that I now walk to my death in the most calm and collected manner. I meet death for Ireland’s cause as I have worked for the same cause all my life. I have asked the Rev E. McCarthy who has prepared me to meet my God and who has given me courage to face the ordeal I am about to undergo, to convey this message to my fellow-countrymen. God save Ireland. Sean Mac Diarmada.

In the Castle, Connolly was carried from his room on a stretcher into the State Corridor, on to the Battleaxe Landing and down the Grand Staircase.

His swaying upturned gaze took in the beauty of murals, ceilings and chandeliers, the doric columns of the halls. It was odd that his first home was in an Edinburgh slum and his last the most regal edifice in Ireland.

In the Upper Yard, he was put in an ambulance. The two friars and his surgeon friend, Tobin, went with him.

Father Aloysius, so young and gentle, on that brief, rocky drive through the silent streets could hardly believe this cruel thing was happening.

He found himself saying, over and over, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

At the jail, Sean, accompanied by the Chaplain, limped his way to the Stonebreakers’ Yard.

The time was 3.45 a.m.

At Bill O’Brien’s house, Lillie and Nora were on their knees at a window facing east. With the first rays of the rising sun, as if even in sleep a voice spoke to them, the children filed into the room, rubbing their eyes. Ina and Roddy and Agna and Aideen and Moira and even little Fiona who was only seven.

‘What’s up, Mommy?’ ‘Why aren’t you undressed?’

Lillie tried to gather them all in her arms at once.

‘It’s Daddy,’ said Nora.

Several horrified voices said at once, ‘They’re not going to kill our Daddy!’

Their father’s ambulance was timed with military precision to arrive as soon as McDermott’s body was put on a stretcher with a blanket over him and borne away in the early light.

Connolly was the only one of the rebel leaders not to be imprisoned in Kilmainham. The ambulance bringing him backed into the yard and dipped its headlights as if in mourning. In the opaline gold-edged dawn even black buildings seemed transparent.

Surgeon Tobin, his white hair ruffled by the wind, supervised as Connolly was taken out and placed in a chair. There was a tender irony in the way the bearers were solicitous for his mummified leg.

Tobin was wondering, If I had amputated, would they still have had the nerve to shoot him?

Connolly, a forlorn figure, was propped up in the chair and roped to the back to prevent him falling off. He looked neat and tidy in his new pyjamas.

As he was being blindfolded, Father Aloysius was thinking how brave and cool he was.

To save the condemned man unnecessary pain, he was to be shot near the gate where he had entered. The other rebels had been executed at the opposite end of the yard.

The firing squad was marched in and stood to attention. Some were disturbed to see the condition of the man they were about to shoot.

Father Aloysius, sympathetic even to the plight of the young soldiers, said to Connolly, ‘Will you pray for these men who are about to shoot you?’

He answered, ‘I will say a prayer for all brave men who do their duty.’

Father Aloysius thought that chimed in perfectly with the Lord’s own prayer, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ It reinforced his feeling that this was not an end but a consummation.

The priests took their places behind the firing squad.

The Chaplain, who had just given the last rites to McDermott, said, ‘Don’t worry, Father, I will do the anointing afterwards.’

His thumb was still moist with blood and holy oil.

It depressed the young friar to think that, having shot a cripple, they were about to kill a badly wounded man and a champion of God’s poor.

The priests stood side by side as Connolly seemed to lift himself a little and straighten in preparation for the end.

The firing squad aimed and fired.

Connolly slumped in the chair against the ropes, his body twitching.

The officer next to the priests stepped forward, his pistol raised.

That final bullet exploding in Connolly’s brain broke the last of Ireland’s chains.