1916

It was only when young Ian Law had confronted him in his office on a January day in 1912, that Sheridan Smith began to realise that he, and many others, had made one, horrible mistake.

When the young man had turned up at the offices, the man at the door had wanted to throw him out.

“You can’t just come in here and speak to Mr. Smith, you know,” he told him. “Does he know you? Have you an appointment?” If Sheridan hadn’t happened to be passing down the hall at that moment and, witnessing the scene, been struck by the look of moral outrage upon the young man’s face, no doubt Mr. Ian Law would have been summarily ejected. As it was, he brought him into his office and asked him courteously what was the matter.

The young man appeared to belong to the superior artisan class. He was a shipyard worker in Belfast. He had been visiting Dublin, where he had never been before, and had read the latest issue of the newspaper. In it he had read an editorial, a measured and reasonable piece in Sheridan’s opinion, on the prospects for Home Rule. And he was outraged. He did not mean to be discourteous to Sheridan, evidently. But he seemed astounded that Sheridan and his newspaper could even consider that Home Rule was a possibility.

“How can your newspaper suggest,” he demanded, “that we should give up every loyalty that we have? Am I to turn my face away from my King and from my God?” He said the words with such certainty and such pride that Sheridan was quite taken aback. “We remember the Battle of the Boyne,” the young man continued. “We remember Derry. Our ancestors fought and died for freedom. Yet your newspaper tells me to submit myself to popery? Never. I will never do such a thing. I don’t know anyone who would.”

He was an honest young man. Sheridan could see that at once. No doubt he came from a hard-working Presbyterian family. His outrage was certainly real.

“I don’t think that Irish Home Rule would affect the practice of your religion,” Sheridan pointed out. But young Mr. Law only looked at him with disgust.

“Home Rule is Rome rule,” he said bluntly. “We’ll fight, I can promise you.” Having received no satisfaction, he left soon afterwards.

And as he pondered the conversation afterwards, it occurred to Sheridan that, though he couldn’t of course agree with the young man’s view of the world, Law had nonetheless administered a corrective to a long-held view of matters in Dublin.

The truth was, it seemed to Sheridan, that none of those who had wanted independence for Ireland had thought about Ulster very much. Daniel O’Connell had always cheerfully admitted that he scarcely knew the province. Even Parnell, Protestant though he was, had never had much interest in the northern province. After that, it was so fixed in everyone’s minds that the Protestants were the oppressors in Ireland, and that once the English were gone, the island would be free, and nobody had troubled much about the fact that up in Ulster, the situation was entirely different.

After all, he thought, what was the Protestant Church in most of Ireland? The Ascendancy’s Church of Ireland. Poorly attended, with little enthusiasm, its churches slowly crumbling for lack of funds and interest, the Church of Ireland was a social institution, for the most part, serving a small, slowly degenerating minority of Cromwellian settlers and ancient landowners. Take away the Ascendancy, and the Protestants become a tiny, toothless minority which can safely be left alone.

But up in Ulster, you had a whole country where, though Catholics were numerous, Protestants were in a majority. And they were not just the gentry. Small farmers, shopkeepers, the large and skilled workforce, were mostly Protestant. Not only that, the Presbyterians who constituted the largest element were passionate about their faith. If, in Ireland’s other three provinces, the Protestant ruling class had some secret fears or moral qualms about their legitimacy, nowadays, the Ulster Presbyterians had no such doubts at all. God had placed them there to build His kingdom. They were sure of it.

Yet even then, Sheridan had been shocked by the strength of the response. For when they saw that the independence legislation might actually go through the parliamentary system now, it was not only the Protestants of Ulster who were up in arms. Like their Scottish ancestors from three centuries before, they came together to pledge a Solemn League and Covenant. Led by Carson, an eloquent Unionist lawyer, and Craig, a Belfast millionaire, by the next year, they had formed a huge force of volunteers. The Ulster Volunteer Force had only wooden rifles, but they mounted impressive parades. Equally alarming, the leader of the British Tory party, himself of Ulster Protestant descent, not only supported them, but even hinted at the necessity of armed resistance. At the great military encampment of the Curragh, out in County Kildare, the officers of the British army let it be known that, if asked to enforce Irish independence upon the loyal Ulstermen, they would refuse to obey orders.

“To be frank with you,” an English journalist visiting the paper told him, “the British people feel a strong sympathy with the Ulster Protestants for two reasons. Firstly, we in England have never lost our deep-rooted fear of Catholicism. Few Englishmen would tolerate the thought of being dominated by Catholics, and we can’t see why the Protestants of Ulster should have to go that way either. But we also think that the Ulster Scots are people like us. They have industry and commerce, they have shipyards now, and linen manufacture. They’re hard-working and industrial. Whereas the Irish are seen as another sort of people entirely—rural, lazy, disorganised. We actually believe them to be of a different race from the men in the north.”

“Did you know that originally, it was men from Ireland who went over and settled Scotland? The very name, ‘Scot,’ in ancient times meant a person from Ireland. The Scots are actually Irish, you might say.”

“The English, I can assure you, are not aware of that. And you can’t deny that the Protestants up in Ulster are very different.”

That he could not deny. By the spring of 1914, the Ulster Volunteers were shipping in quantities of arms.

Meanwhile, it seemed that the Protestants in the north were to be met with an equal response. An Irish Volunteer Force was being formed in answer. Soon, news came that they were getting arms shipped in as well. Was the country drifting towards some sort of Civil War? Sheridan did not know what might have happened had it not been for the intervention, just then, of a wider conflict that overshadowed everything else.

Down in Sarajevo, an Austrian archduke was assassinated, and suddenly the whole of Europe found itself at war.

It was a curious feature of the Great War that for many of those who loved Ireland, it came as a relief. The British government, anxious that nothing should distract from the war effort, promised that there should be independence for the island, to be deferred until the war was over. “Since nobody thinks the war can last more than a few months, nobody minds waiting,” Sheridan pointed out. As for Ulster, it was agreed that some special arrangement would have to be made. What form that might take remained to be seen. But at least the threat of internal conflict had been shelved. Indeed, Redmond encouraged all those who had flocked to join the Irish Volunteers: “The British have promised us our freedom. Let us help them with their war effort, that our freedom may come all the sooner.” Tens of thousands of Irishmen, Protestants and Catholics alike, were joining the volunteer British army. “I find it heart-warming to see such friendship,” Sheridan Smith declared. The great conflict, therefore, brought him a certain lightening of the heart.

And in his own life, also, he entered a period of unexpected happiness. The cause was Caitlin.

Her interest in the stage, fortunately, had not developed into an obsession. If anything, it had aided in her schoolwork. Certainly the Dominican nuns in Eccles Street, where she went to school, were delighted with her. By the time she was sixteen, she had announced that when she finished school, she wanted to go to St. Mary’s University to study modern languages. At the same time, she was developing not only into a beautiful young woman but into a thoughtful one as well. Late in 1914, after a short illness, old Maureen Smith had peacefully died, and Caitlin had helped to nurse her at the end. By the time she was seventeen, when her mother made a visit to England for a month, she had felt quite confident that she could leave Caitlin in charge of the house in Fitzwilliam Square. The servants were there to take care of her, of course, and Sheridan had looked in every day. “But the truth is,” her mother said, “she could do perfectly well without us.”

She had also joined the Daughters of Erin. Sheridan was not sure what he felt about this. When he questioned her about it, however, she had just laughed. “I teach Irish to illiterate children—which really means that I tell them stories,” she told him. No doubt this was true. But Sheridan had heard that some of the women in the organisation were involved in other activities that were more disturbing.

The labour movement had been growing rapidly in the last few years. The union had a big headquarters called Liberty Hall down on the quays nowadays; a women’s union had been started as well. And the movement had a new leader, too—a socialist firebrand called James Connolly. In 1913 Connolly had led a huge strike for improved conditions that had closed all sorts of businesses for weeks. Even staid old Jacobs Biscuits had been hit. Some of the Daughters of Erin had taken part in the strikes. They were getting involved with Sinn Fein and some other dubious organisations. “You take care who you become friendly with,” he had advised her. But she was a sensible girl; so he wasn’t seriously worried. Meanwhile, he had had the joy of watching a marvellous child blossom, before his eyes, into a talented young woman. Even when her mother was there, he saw her every week. He delighted in her company.

It was in the summer of 1915 that he had taken Caitlin and her mother up into the Wicklow Mountains. Their purpose had been twofold: to visit the lovely old site of Glendalough and to see Rathconan. Rather surprisingly, the Count had never cared to go up to look at his ancestral estate when he was alive, and as a result, neither Caitlin nor her mother had ever been there. Caitlin, especially, had been eager to go. The visit to the old monastery and its two lakes had been a great success. But when they had come to Rathconan, Caitlin had been enraptured. Its eccentric owner had been in residence at the time, turban and all. Sheridan hadn’t been too sure what sort of reception they’d get; but learning who they were, old Mrs. Budge had been quite happy to show them the place, without even giving them a lecture on the transmigration of souls. But when, at the end, Caitlin had exclaimed: “Oh, how I should like to live here,” the old lady had responded rather sharply: “The Budges will be staying at Rathconan long after I’ve gone; so there’ll be no place for you. None at all.” And then, rather disconcertingly: “I shall be staying here, too,” she’d added. “I’m going to be a hawk, you know. I shall fly over the hills and eat mice.”

Sheridan had always heard that Rose Budge was the last of the family. But meeting his brother a few weeks later, he had asked about it, and Quinlan had informed him: “I had supposed so, too. But it turns out that the grandfather had a younger brother who went to England many years ago. The old lady has a second cousin, a Budge, who has a son. They’ve never met, and the son doesn’t even know it, but she’s left him Rathconan.” He’d shaken his head. “She’s full of surprises.”

“Did you know that she is going to return in her next life as a hawk?”

“Ah, now that,” said his brother, “doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

The rest of that year had passed quietly. The war had dragged on—into what, to Sheridan, seemed like a terrible, bloody stalemate. But in Ireland, things seemed quiet enough. There were rumours of trouble, from time to time. Personally he tended to discount them. Caitlin’s mother developed a bronchial condition over the New Year. Her doctor told her that she should go to a warmer climate for some weeks. The south of France was suggested. In March, therefore, she had departed, leaving Caitlin once again in the house in Fitzwilliam Square, under the general eye of Sheridan.

It was in the third week of April that Sheridan discovered Caitlin had been deceiving him.

He had been with her in the house at tea time. She had finished her schooling just before Christmas, and she was intending to begin at the university the following autumn. It had been suggested to her that she should travel, in the meantime, but she had insisted that she wished to remain in Dublin, and since she had involved herself with the theatre, this was understandable. At six o’clock in the evening, he had left her to walk home to Wellington Road. He had crossed the canal, and gone a little way when he realised that he had left his umbrella at the house, and so retraced his steps to Fitzwilliam Square. He had seen her from a hundred yards off, just as she was getting onto a bicycle in front of her house. She seemed to be in a hurry. He might have supposed that she was going to the theatre; but even in the dusk, he could see that she was not dressed for the theatre at all. She was wearing a green tweed uniform.

The uniform of Cumann na mBan.

The Irishwomen’s Council: that was what the words meant. But what did they signify? The thing hadn’t existed two years yet. It was another of the creations of Maud Gonne and her friends; but whatever you thought of Maud Gonne, you couldn’t deny her genius for organisation. Cumann na mBan were certainly nationalist. But what did they actually do? Some people said that they practised nursing. Others that they were mixed in with far more sinister groups. She certainly should have told him about any such activity. He knew very well that her mother wouldn’t approve. He would have to take steps. He almost hailed her on the spot, but then thought better of it. Whatever she was up to, she couldn’t come to great harm at the moment. Why risk a confrontation with her now? He thought quickly. It was Easter week. There was to be a family gathering at his house on Easter Monday. Either then, of soon after, he would sit down with her and have a quiet talk. Moments later, he was retracing his steps home.

Easter week passed quietly. He saw Caitlin briefly on Easter Saturday. Sunday was spent quietly at home. On Monday, they prepared to receive their guests in the afternoon. It was a little before one o’clock that a neighbour came to their house with the news.

“Something’s going on in the city. They say it’s a rising. A soldier’s been killed.”

“A rising? Why-ever would anyone want to start a rising now?” It made no sense. Soon afterwards, further news came. They’ve occupied the General Post Office in Sackville Street. They’ve proclaimed a republic.”

“This is madness.”

But soon the word was everywhere. There was a rising. Something big.

“I’d best go over and collect Caitlin,” he said. “Make sure she’s safe. It’s not far to Fitzwilliam Square.”

But when he got there, he found no sign of her. Nor did she appear at all that day, or the next.

She hadn’t even been sure she liked Willy O’Byrne at first. It was his cousin Rita who’d introduced them.

She’d met Rita at a meeting of the Daughters of Erin, and some other groups. Maud Gonne might be a society lady, but Caitlin liked the fact that her organisation contained all kinds of people, and that once you were in it, all questions of class seemed to disappear. Rita had worked at the Jacobs Biscuit Factory until the great strike of 1913. After that, they had refused to take her back. By the time Caitlin met her, she was an organiser for the women’s union and a member of the Irish Citizens Army. She was often at the big union headquarters of Liberty Hall, on the northern quay near the Custom House. “You can easily look in there on your way to the Abbey Theatre,” she said with a laugh.

Despite its name, the ICA was a union group. Connolly had started it at the time of the strike, to defend striking workers from vigilantes hired by the employers; but it was a trained force nowadays, open equally to men and women. Rita had intrigued Caitlin; she was a small woman, with reddish hair, and inclined to plumpness. Caitlin instinctively liked her, and they had agreed to meet a week later. And on that occasion, Rita had turned up with her cousin Willy O’Byrne.

Looking back, Caitlin remembered that it wasn’t Willy’s dark good looks, or even his occasional intensity that had impressed her. It was his calmness and the quiet logic of his thoughts. They had spoken about the women’s movement, and the union, but when they came to discuss the war that had recently started, Willy had been quietly uncompromising.

“Ireland, with the best of intentions, has made a huge mistake,” he said. “By Ireland, I mean Redmond and the majority of the Volunteers.”

When, in answer to the threat from the Ulster Protestants in 1914, the Irish Volunteers had been started, the response had been quite astonishing. In no time at all, there were over a hundred and fifty thousand men. Few of them had arms, of course, but they were ready to drill, and train, and make a fine show of themselves, just as their Patriot namesakes had a century and a half before. Indeed, so large were the numbers that the organisation seemed almost to overshadow the Parliament men. Nominally, at least, as leader of the parliamentary party, Redmond was at their head. When Britain had promised Ireland her freedom and asked for help against the Germans meanwhile, and Redmond had told the Volunteers that they should oblige, about a hundred and seventy thousand Volunteers had gone along with him. But a smaller group, about ten thousand strong, had refused. The Irish Volunteers, they’d called themselves, and clearly Willy O’Byrne was on their side.

“It’s not that I don’t understand Redmond,” he had quietly told her. “I don’t even blame the thousands of poor Catholic boys who’ve gone to fight in the British army. It’s just employment, for them, and Redmond’s promised them that if they do it, Ireland will be free. But the whole business is a huge fraud, that’s all.”

“You don’t think that the British will live up to the bargain?”

“I don’t. The Ulster Protestants won’t let them; and the British like the Ulster Protestants and despise the Irish Catholics anyway. The best we can hope for is a divided Ireland, which is no solution anyway. Redmond doesn’t want to see that, of course. Because if he can’t achieve anything useful, where does that leave him?” He shrugged. “At some point you have to face reality. There’s going to be a fight. It can’t be avoided.”

There was something almost cold about him, she thought. Cold but compelling.

“The worst of it is,” he went on, “that by supporting the British in their war, we play into their hands. Our own Volunteers are obligingly getting themselves killed in a British war fighting the Germans. At the very moment when, because of the war, it would be the easiest time to kick the British out.”

“Perhaps the British will feel differently about us by the time the war is over.”

“Hmm. Have you considered another possibility? What if the Germans win? We might be better off having them for friends.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. Yes, she decided, his mind is very hard. He read her thoughts.

“It’s better to face a harsh reality than delude oneself,” he remarked. “Besides, it’s you women who are the practical ones. It’s you who have formed Cumann na mBan to aid the nationalist cause. And when you did, not a single one of the branches voted to go with Redmond. You all supported the Irish Volunteers. So I leave myself in the hands of the women.”

Rita grinned.

“He’s good, isn’t he?”

He’s in the IRB, thought Caitlin.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood were just as secretive as ever. There was no doubt but that they’d be in the Irish Volunteers, for instance; but you wouldn’t know for certain who they were. She decided to challenge him.

“Are you in the IRB?”

He stared at her, evenly.

“Why would you ask?”

“Are you?”

“They never say, I’ve heard. So it would be pointless asking.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Rita said with a laugh. “They won’t have any women in the IRB, will they, Willy? He never tells me anything, you know.”

Willy shrugged.

“I can’t tell what I don’t know,” he said. Then he smiled at Caitlin. His smile was charming. “I’ve met you before, by the way. You were a Countess then.”

Rita looked at Caitlin, surprised. Rita shook her head. When she had joined the Daughters of Erin, she had stopped using her title. There were enough countesses about already, she had decided. One of these was the leader of Cumann ne mBan, the Countess Markievicz, a flamboyant Anglo-Irish aristocrat who’d married a penniless Polish count, and who liked to wear uniforms and carry a revolver. The other was Countess Plunkett, whose husband, heir to a rich Dublin builder, had been made a Papal Count for his generous donations to the Church. The Plunketts and their children were prominent supporters of the various nationalist movements. Two countesses were enough, Caitlin had thought. She went by the name of Caitlin Byrne.

Willy reminded her of the occasion when he had met her at her uncle Sheridan Smith’s house. “You were five or six, I think. You were sick.”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember you,” she confessed.

“No. But I remembered you. By the way,” he added, “I work for Sheridan Smith. But I never discuss my politics with him.”

“Then nor will I,” she promised him.

She hadn’t seen him for some weeks after that.

She had first put on the uniform of Cumann na mBan in May 1915. She was seventeen. The uniform was not issued. Many of the women made their own. Green tweed was prescribed: a long military jacket with big flap pockets, a long skirt, white shirt, green cloth tie. And the all-important pin brooch—the initials “C na mB” in gold, with a rifle through them.

She had kept it hidden from her mother in a suitcase, and worn a long mackintosh over it when she went out to the meeting.

The purpose of Cumann na mBan was auxiliary. They trained together in first aid and signalling. Many of the women learned to shoot a rifle also; and it was at target practice one day that she saw Willy O’Byrne again. He had come by to watch. As it happened, she had discovered that when it came to shooting a rifle, she was a natural marksman. ”Annie Oakley,” the other girls called her. She found him standing behind her as she finished.

“Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

He gave her a look that was appreciative.

“The uniform suits you.” He thought for a moment. “Ever used a pistol?”

“No.”

“Try this.” He pulled out a pistol and gave it to her. It felt surprisingly heavy in her hand. “Here.” He took her arm and held it in position. “I’ll show you.”

It took her a little time to master the technique, but after a few days of practice, she became quite proficient.

He had encountered her several times in the weeks after that. He would just stop by the house where they met; or if she had gone down to see Rita at Liberty Hall, down on the quay, she might find him there. He would speak to her in a friendly way, just for a few minutes usually; then he’d be gone. One day at the end of August, meeting her at Liberty Hall, he produced a sheet of paper and pressed it into her hand. “I had it printed,” he told her. It was a funeral oration for an old Fenian. It had been given by Patrick Pearse, one of the most inspired of the Irish language enthusiasts, who had done much to further the cause of Irish education. She could see why Willy O’Byrne had gone to such trouble to have it copied down and printed: the oration was magnificent. Many of its phrases struck her. He invoked the memory of Wolfe Tone. His words had the inspiration of another Emmet. ”Life springs from death,” he urged, “and from the graves of Patriot men and women spring living nations.” But it was his final peroration that was the most memorable of all. The British thought they had pacified or intimidated the Irish. How wrong they were. ”The fools! the fools! the fools!— they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

As he urged her to read it, she noticed a look in his eye that she had not seen before, and realised that, after all, he was capable of being moved.

Several times after that, during the autumn months, she was able to have quite lengthy conversations with him. Once, he even told her about his childhood at Rathconan, and how his father had tried unsuccessfully to buy his tenancy from old Mrs. Budge. She told him about her own encounter with the lady. He was curious to learn that she would return in another life as a bird of prey. Perhaps it was this link with his childhood that quite often made him come and talk to her if he saw her in a crowded room.

It was a little before Christmas that he turned up at a meeting and afterwards beckoned her to one side.

“I have something for you.” He smiled. “A Christmas present.” He took out a carefully wrapped rectangular package and handed it to her. It was quite heavy. “Better open it when you get home. Don’t let anyone see you.” Then he turned away.

In her room at home, when she had locked the door, she opened the box. She had already guessed. It was a pistol: a Webley, long-barrelled, deadly. And ammunition. She wondered what she could give him in return.

The next day, to her surprise, her mother had found her knitting.

“I thought you hated knitting,” she remarked.

“Just something that I promised to do for a friend,” she remarked. Two days later, it was done. Not a terribly good production, perhaps, but adequate. She saw him at Liberty Hall on Christmas Eve. “Here’s your present,” she told him, with a smile. “Better not unwrap it here though.”

Early in the New Year, however, she was delighted to see him wearing the scarf she had knitted. It was green. It looked very well on him, she thought.

By now, it seemed to Caitlin, the Irish Volunteers were highly organised and well trained. They had branches all over the country. Their leader, a man named Mac Neill, kept them in excellent order. There was always the risk that the British authorities would clamp down on them; but so far they had obviously thought it wiser to do nothing. The people of Dublin were quite used to seeing their orderly parades. As for the women in Cumann na mBan, some were quite open, others preferred not to advertise their connection with the movement. She herself had never mentioned it to her mother or Sheridan. On the pretext of going to an art lecture, she would often slip out in uniform. But she usually wore something over it. The servants knew, but said nothing.

One thing did strike her, however. Once, walking back from a meeting, pushing her bicycle while Willy O’Byrne walked beside her, they had been speaking of the considerable forces at the government’s command. The British still had twenty thousand regular troops in barracks. In addition, there was the Royal Irish Constabulary. And ironically, there were also a considerable number of Redmond’s Volunteers, who were supposed to be helping the British for the war’s duration. When you thought of all these numbers that the British could arm, her question seemed obvious.

“If ever the time should come when there is actually a rising,” she said, “our Irish Volunteers are going to need a lot more arms than they’ve got now. How will they be supplied? I shouldn’t think another run like the Asgard would do it.”

Back in 1914, when in answer to the Ulster arms shipments, the Volunteers had needed their own arms, the rich author Erskine Childers had let his sailing ketch, the Asgard, be used to run arms in by the Ben of Howth. The incident had been famous; but for a proper rising, something on a far larger scale would be needed. She thought of what old Maureen had told her about the Maddens in America. “Would the Americans finance such a thing?” she asked.

“Perhaps. Or even the Germans, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. She glanced at him, but did not ask further. She had the distinct impression, however, that he knew more than he’d said.

In April she noticed a change in him. She met him and Rita one evening, and though he talked as usual, he seemed abstracted. Easter week approached. On Palm Sunday, she saw Rita, and again on Wednesday. On the second occasion, Rita confided in her, “Something’s coming up. I don’t know what, but in the ICA, we’ve been told there will be manoeuvres on Easter weekend. She gave Caitlin a meaningful look. Important manoeuvres.” On Thursday morning, Caitlin chanced to see Willy in the street. They only exchanged a few words, but she thought there was an air of suppressed excitement about him.

She was surprised to see him coming from the quays across College Green that evening. He was walking slowly, his head bowed, and he appeared to be muttering to himself. She had actually been attending an art class, and as he started to walk eastwards along the wall of Trinity, she rode her bicycle by him. He was not aware of her, and glancing back, she hesitated to interrupt him. Yet he looked so troubled that, fifty yards farther on, she put on her brakes and, resting her foot on the side of the road, waited for him to draw up.

“Are you all right?”

He glanced at her, still frowning. She was afraid that she had trespassed upon his private thoughts.

“No.” He gave her a nod that indicated she should remain in his company. He wasn’t wearing her scarf today, she noticed. She dismounted completely and began to walk beside him. The street was almost empty. They went in silence for a hundred yards. “I know you don’t talk,” he said finally.

“I should know that.”

“It’ll be out anyway, soon enough now.” He shook his head. “You remember you asked about arms?”

“Yes.”

“They came today. Actually, this man Sir Roger Casement has been negotiating for us in Germany for more than a year. Strange isn’t it, an English public servant, knighted, yet sympathetic to Ireland as well? We asked for troops. They wouldn’t give them. But twenty thousand rifles and a million rounds of ammunition were to be landed with Casement in Kerry today. They came, too. But something went wrong. The ship was intercepted. Casement’s arrested.”

“I heard something might happen this weekend.”

“Perhaps it will. Say nothing of what I’ve told you. But keep going down to Liberty Hall. If there’s more to hear, you’ll hear it there. Don’t be seen with me now. Good night.”

The next three days had been strange indeed. Half the time, nobody seemed to know what was going on. But gradually she began to understand. The rising had been planned. The IRB was behind it. They’d even sent out orders to the Irish Volunteers, all over the country, to rise on Easter Sunday. They hadn’t even told Mac Neill, who was supposed to be in charge. With the arms from Casement lost, Mac Neill countermanded the order. But Tom Clarke, the deadly tobacconist, and Pearse and the other IRB men wanted to go ahead anyway. They started sending Cumann na mBan girls off with new orders for a rising on Monday instead. Each time Caitlin arrived at Liberty Hall, she found more confusion than she had before. But on Sunday, Willy was there.

“Be here tomorrow morning,” he told her firmly. “There’ll be plenty for you to do.”

That proved to be an understatement. The Easter Rising was a strange business, but it was certainly a week to be remembered. For a start, there was the question of numbers.

It was clear to her from the moment she arrived at Liberty Hall that the order and counter-order of the weekend had taken a heavy toll. Most of the Volunteers, especially outside Dublin, had believed that the rising was cancelled. Only about fourteen hundred of the Irish Volunteers were at the quay, together with about another two hundred of the trade union ICA. She saw Rita among them. It seemed that the leaders had a plan, though. It was interesting to see how several of the men directing affairs now were obviously members of the secretive IRB. The poetic Pearse and the gaunt tobacconist Tom Clarke were among them. James Connolly of the union was taking a leading role, also. Though not one of the leaders, she could see from the way that he bustled about that Willy O’Byrne had their confidence.

Despite their modest numbers, the plan was to take control of a number of strategic points in the city. The General Post Office on Sackville Street, opposite Nelson’s pillar, would be the headquarters. Then there would be garrisons in the Four Courts a short way upstream, the Castle and City Hall, Jacobs Biscuit Factory to the south; another industrial building, Boland’s Mills, in the southeast, by the Grand Canal docks; and several other places. People were being chosen for each location.

Just for a moment, she asked herself what she was doing there. The enterprise seemed hasty and almost sure to fail. Even now, she guessed that the British forces in Dublin probably outnumbered theirs by three to one. But as she caught sight of Rita’s excited face, and the faces of other young women she knew, she chided herself. If they are ready to fight for Ireland, then so should I be, she thought. She wondered where she should be posted. Somebody pointed to her and said that as she was such a good marksman, she ought to be a sniper. There was some hesitation. Then Willy appeared. She saw him converse briefly with some of the leading men, pointing to her. Then he came over.

“Did you come here on your bicycle?’

“I did. Why?”

“Go home quickly.” Her face must have registered dismay, because he laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you every chance to get killed. But I want you to come back here dressed as if you were going to an art lecture, or to the Abbey. You may be more use like that. I need you to look like,” he grinned, “a young countess.”

“I’m not giving up my Webley.”

“Hide it somewhere, that’s all.”

She was back in half an hour. When he saw her, Willy nodded approval. When she asked him what he wanted her to do, he just said: “You’ll see.”

The detachments started marching out at eleven o’clock. She watched them go down the street. As it was the Easter holiday, there were quite a few people strolling about. They’d seen the Volunteers march about before, so they evidently supposed this was some sort of Easter parade. Nobody took more than the most cursory notice.

An hour later, to the public’s great astonishment, Pearse the orator came out in front of the General Post Office and proclaimed an Irish Republic.

A week to be remembered. It was not long before she understood the reason why Willy had asked her to change her clothes. Within a day, there were cordons and barricades all over the centre of the city. The GPO and the Four Courts particularly were under heavy fire. There were snipers on the rooftops. More and more British troops were coming into the city to cordon off the whole centre. Later in the week, a gunboat came up the Liffey and started pounding the rebel positions. And the most useful task she could perform was to carry messages, without incurring suspicion.

If she had any talent for acting, she realised, now was the time to use it. She did rather well. To her surprise, she found that she could get in and out of the GPO. The women were running both a kitchen and a field hospital there. By taking a careful route, she could get to the Four Courts. Though it got harder as the days went by, she was able to cross the Liffey and get to St. Stephen’s Green, where the women had another field hospital set up, to City Hall and points beyond. She was proud to find that in most of the garrisons, the women were soon relieving the men as snipers. When she was sent down to the Jacobs factory, she found Rita in high good humour. “They threw me out, so I’ve occupied them,” she announced. “And before we leave, we’ll eat all their biscuits!” Only at Boland’s Mills did she find that there were no women. The commander there was a tall, bony-faced Irish American in his early thirties with a strange Spanish name: de Valera. He told her frankly, “I won’t have women under my command.”

“You think we’ll run away?” Caitlin demanded.

“Not at all.” He laughed. “The women are too brave. They take so many risks I can’t control them.” He wrote a message on a scrap of paper and asked her to take it to the GPO. “What will you do with the message if the soldiers take you?” he asked.

“Eat it,” she answered simply.

But the soldiers never did take her. The snipers nearly shot her a score of times. Indeed, since the Dubliners could never resist the urge to have a peek to see what was going on, she saw many of them hit by snipers or stray bullets. But she became adept at knowing where the dangerous corners and crossings were. Her genius lay in her ability to bicycle up to a group of English soldiers and ask for their help in getting through. She always had an excuse. She had to see her art professor, go to the theatre to collect a play script, visit her great aunt. Once she carefully loosened her bicycle chain and begged the soldiers to help her get it back on. Sometimes, of course, they refused to let her through, and she had to find a detour to come at her objective some other way. But often as not, they took the pretty, well-spoken girl with the expensive clothes and the flashing green eyes for a harmless young aristocrat, and let her pass with a warning that she’d better take care.

Nor were the soldiers so foolish to do so. After all, the Volunteers were barricaded in their occupied buildings. Some of their women were insisting they were nurses, when they weren’t sniping from the windows; but they were nearly all in uniform of one sort or another. And above all, most of the people of Dublin had not only been taken by surprise by the rising, they wanted nothing to do with it.

Caitlin heard their comments frequently. What was the point of all this fuss, it was asked, when independence had already been promised? Shopkeepers and businessmen were not pleased at the damage done to the city, especially after the gunboat started pounding the rebel positions. “Sackville Street,” a grocer complained to her, “is being turned into a ruin. And who will pay for all this? We shall. You can be sure of it.” More than once, going through the Liberties in the latter part of the week, she heard furious complaints from Catholic mothers, because the disruption had delayed the pay packets they got from their sons in the British army.

Yet somehow this lack of sympathy made Caitlin admire the rising even more. The gesture, the bravery—and who knew, if Willy was right, the necessity of it—were to be admired. The people in the buildings, surrounded by ever more British troops, were her countrymen and her friends. She wished she could talk to Willy O’Byrne about it. But she hadn’t seen him since Monday. She believed he had gone to the Four Courts.

On Monday night, she had slept at the GPO. On Tuesday night, she had returned to sleep at her home, and found an urgent note from Sheridan Smith demanding to know where she was. At dawn the next day, she dropped a reply through his letter box telling him that she was well and busy with her studies, and that she’d come to see him in a few days. He mightn’t believe it, but at least she’d replied, and he’d know she was alive. She spent the next night at the biscuit factory with Rita. By Thursday, it was becoming clear that the GPO couldn’t hold out much longer. Some of the women there were sent to their homes. On Friday morning, much of the area was in flames, and a fire broke out in the building.

For Caitlin, the rising ended at noon on Friday. She had been up all the night before and gone home to rest. Entering the house in Fitzwilliam Square, she had experienced a sense that something was amiss. The maid had given her a strange look. Then, turning, she had realised that Sheridan Smith was standing between her and the door. He was looking very grave.

“You will not be going out again,” he said quietly. “If necessary, Caitlin, I will prevent you.”

She said nothing, but started up the stairs to her room. The door was open. On the floor, she saw the suitcase into which she had thrust her green uniform on Monday. The case was empty now.

“I have burned it,” Sheridan said. “Your mother, by the way, is on her way home.”

Still she made no reply. There wasn’t much point. She had to sleep anyway. She made to close the door, but Sheridan shook his head. “I shall keep you in my sight,” he said, not unkindly. She sat down on the bed, and then smiled to herself.

“You must give me a moment’s privacy Uncle Sherry,” she said.

She needed to hide her revolver.

By the time she awoke, it was clear that there was nothing left for her to do. The GPO could no longer be held. Its gallant defenders, including Pearse, had to abandon it. By Sunday, the last of the Volunteer garrisons had surrendered.

It was on Sunday morning that the soldiers came to Fitzwilliam Square. They went from door to door. They announced that they were checking every house for “Sinn Feiners.” Caitlin had already noticed this confusion on the part of the British troops, and even the British newspapers. Perhaps, hearing the IRB men referred to as Fenians—which derived from the army of Irish legend—they supposed this to be the same as Griffith’s nonviolent nationalist movement, Sinn Fein, which hadn’t joined the rising at all. It was typical, she thought, that the British authorities should even have misunderstood who their enemy was.

Sheridan Smith, anticipating a visitation of this kind, had decided it was better for them both to remain in the house; and she had to admit, he handled the situation very well. His own well-known respectability was a help, no doubt. There were no “Sinn Feiners” in the house, he assured them, only his great niece, a student, and he himself, who was staying in the house until the girl’s mother returned from abroad. He encouraged them to search thoroughly, all the same. They only had the most cursory glance around and politely left. They did not find her Webley.

Meanwhile, the tough British General, Maxwell, who had been sent to sort the place out, was moving swiftly to court-martial the leaders of the rising. By midweek, Sheridan told her: “I believe about a hundred and eighty men are selected, and one woman, Countess Markievicz.” The trials went swiftly. The next day, he came to the house looking grim.

“I have sad news. Did you know an employee of mine, Willy O’Byrne? I had guessed he was mixed up in this when he didn’t appear, but it seems he must have been further in than I thought. Anyway, he was one of those court-martialled today.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid he’s to be shot.”

The fools! The fools! She might have echoed it then. But it was during the coming months that she really came to think it.

One couldn’t say that, by the standards of the day, the British had been harsh. Indeed, they had probably been kinder than any other country would have been. But they had not been clever.

Before the garrisons surrendered, several of them made the women leave. Most of these, after being questioned by the British officers they encountered, were told to go home. The truth was, the British hardly knew what to do with them. Seventy-nine women were arrested. Seventy-three of these, also, were soon released. Caitlin was glad to hear that Rita was one of those set free. A handful were held in Kilmainham, then sent to the Mountjoy prison, then deported to serve time in England. Only Countess Markievicz, who had made such play with her revolver and encouraged others to do the same, was sentenced to be shot.

Nearly three and a half thousand men were taken. Almost fifteen hundred were released. The rest were interned in England, except for the hundred and eighty-six selected for court-martial. Of these, eighty-eight, including de Valera, were sentenced to the firing squad.

And most of the sentences were not carried out. The Countess was interned, because she was a woman. De Valera got off, perhaps because he was deemed an American citizen. All but fifteen of the sentences were also commuted to life sentences—including, Caitlin was delighted to discover, that of Willy O’Byrne. Under amnesty, most of these were also to be freed within a year or so.

But the fifteen men shot served their cause better than they could have imagined. Pearse, the poetic soul, greatly loved. He’d led the men into the GPO and proclaimed a republic. He had to know he’d be shot. But his little brother? Singled out, so far as anyone could see, just for being a brother. Joseph Plunkett, dying of sickness anyway, married his sweetheart hours before the firing squad, and became a figure of romance. James Connolly, the union man: he’d been so badly wounded already that they tied him to a chair to shoot him. For ten days these executions went on, and by the end, few though they were, nobody saw any justice in it.

And public sentiment began to turn. When one of the heroes of the rising went on a hunger strike the next year, the prison men managed to kill him during force feeding. It was not meant to happen. But it did.

By late 1917, the moderates of the Sinn Fein organisation, whom the British mistook for the Fenians, and the more militant nationalists came together to form a political party, and chose de Valera to be their leader. “We want an Irish Republic,” they frankly declared, “and we’ll contest seats in local and parliamentary elections.” The next year, the British government arrested all its leaders.

And then, locked in its desperate struggle with Germany, and hungry for troops, instead of thanking Ireland for her many volunteers, the British government suddenly threatened the Irish with conscription. “You see,” Willy O’Byrne and others like him could say, “the British make agreements, but they cannot be trusted.”

The fools: even Sheridan Smith said it now. “If the British wanted to prove that the men of the rising were right,” he remarked, “they could hardly have set about it better.” As the Great War reached its end in 1918, a General Election was called. Redmond’s old party had only six seats. The Unionists, meaning Protestant Ulster really, had twenty-six. The new Sinn Fein amalgam had seventy-three. “The world has changed,” Sheridan Smith concluded. “Changed utterly.”

But it had changed even more than people had expected. For having been elected, all the Irish Members of Parliament, with the exception of the Unionist and Redmond’s handful of men, did what they thought was the only logical thing to do for men with their beliefs. Not only did they refuse to take their seats in the British Parliament at Westminster, they went one better than that. They set up their own Assembly of Ireland, the Dail Eireann, in Dublin. “We are the true government of Ireland now, they said.” By the spring, they had constituted ministries headed by Griffith, Countess Markievicz, Count Plunkett, Mac Neill, of the former Volunteers, Collins, a vigorous young IRB man, and others. De Valera was President. “We are a republic,” they said. “We refuse to recognise English rule any longer.” And so, in the spring of 1919, Ireland was in the strange state of having a British government, with rules, regulations, and administrators at Dublin Castle, and a second, shadow state, far more popular, claiming legitimacy even if it lacked the power to impose itself. The moral and political victory, as far as the Sinn Fein members were concerned, was already theirs. It was up to England to recognise the fact. Nobody quite knew what to do.

It had changed for Caitlin, too, in an unexpected way. When her mother had returned to Dublin after the rising in 1916, she had seemed quite content to stay there. Whether, in the event, she would have done better to spend her winters in France, one could never know for certain. But when a huge influenza epidemic spread across Europe just after the ending of the Great War, she succumbed to it. In the spring of 1919, Countess Caitlin Birne suddenly found herself twenty years old, soon to be twenty-one, and a rich young woman. She resolved, very sensibly, to do nothing at all and complete her studies.

She had not seen Willy O’Byrne for a long time. She was quite surprised, in the summer, to receive a message that he would like to call for her one Saturday and take her out for the day.

She knew a little of his activities. After he had returned from jail, she had not seen him, but Sheridan Smith had told her: “He no longer works for me. He has gone into partnership with Father MacGowan’s brother, that runs the bookshop.” He paused. “Part of his business, I believe, is to go to America to collect funds for political purposes. “And he gave her a wry smile. “He gets some of his funds, I believe, from the hands of my own Madden relations.”

Willy turned up in a car. He was quite unchanged, but he looked well, she thought, and happy. “I thought,” he announced, “that I’d drive up to Rathconan, if you’d like to come.”

It was a beautiful day. The road up into the Wicklow Mountains was narrow. Stone walls sometimes shut out the view. At other times she could see huge sweeps down towards the sea. He seemed delighted to be going up to his childhood home.

“The old lady’s not there. I already checked,” he said with a smile. “But there’s someone else I’d like you to meet.”

“Your mother?”

“No, she died I’m afraid. But my father is still living.” He seemed to find this thought amusing for some reason.

She was pleased to find, when they got to the long, white-walled cottage where the old man lived, that old Fintan O’Byrne was a tall, fine-looking man, with sparse grey hair and a long white moustache. He welcomed her to his cottage courteously, told her that his son had spoken of her, and offered them both a simple meal. Bacon, black pudding, potato. “I live very simply,” he said with a smile, “but I hope to live a good while yet. I think,” he added, “that the air up here must be good. People live a long time. And perhaps if you belong to a place, that helps, too. Or so I believe.”

“My father believes that Rathconan should be his,” Willy said with a smile. “He will never rest in his grave until that mad old woman has given him his own land, at least. But you know, Father,” he said almost gleefully, “the estate was never ours at all. The rightful heir is this young lady sitting in front of you now.” He turned to Caitlin with a grin. “I have been longing for the day when the two claimants could see each other face-to-face, Caitlin. Now you’ll have to fight it out!”

But his father only smiled at her benignly.

“I can see you’re an O’Byrne,” he said. “No doubt of that. As to whether your branch should have had this place, or mine, that is a question too long ago to think of. Certainly it was your ancestors who were chieftains here, when mine were not. But you know,” he turned to Willy, “I’ve a piece of news for you, and for this young lady, as regards the estate. There is an heir. A Budge.” He said the name with mild disgust. “A cousin forgotten by all of us, but remembered by the old lady, it seems. He’s to have it after her, if he wants it. And I dare say he will.”

“I didn’t know,” said Willy. “What is he called?”

“His name is Victor Budge. He lives in England. He has been in correspondence with her. He has done some military service, but I understand he works for a brewery now. I do not know in what capacity. My impression,” Fintan O’Byrne added with faint irony, “is that he is not always employed.”

He took them all round the place, and walked them a little way up the hillside, to where there was a magnificent view. Pointing along the slope, he indicated to Caitlin the area where you could still see the outline of the fields that had been planted with potatoes before the Famine. The more time she spent with him the more she liked him. When it was time for them to leave, she parted from him with real regret.

Was it possible that Willy had some other motive in introducing her to his father? she wondered. If so, he gave no sign of it.

For on their return journey, he seemed to want to talk about a very different subject.

“You know,” he said, “that there is going to be another fight.” Indeed, small skirmishes between the British government forces, and the Irish Republican Army, as the Irish Volunteers now called themselves, had started months ago. “Unless the British and the Ulster Protestants are ready to concede something that de Valera and the Sinn Fein men in the Dail can accept, then there’s no alternative. And when that comes”—he glanced at her—“the women were very important in the rising, you know. They’ll be even more important in the future. You could have an important role.”

“I was just a courier.”

“A brilliant one. You have remarkable talents. And of course,” he smiled, “you can pick off any man at a hundred yards.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” she said. “I support the cause but . . .” She hardly knew why it was—not cowardice, she was fairly sure—but she didn’t want to join the armed struggle any more. “I will consider it,” she promised him. “If I want to do anything, I’ll let you know.”

“As you wish.” He gave her a nod which seemed to imply that he respected her decision. “You know your own mind. That’s for certain.”

He drove her back to Fitzwilliam Square and left her at her house. When she thanked him for the day, he seemed quite pleased. But perhaps she was a little disappointed that she never heard from him again. Not for more than a year.

He was right, of course. The fight couldn’t be avoided, because neither side could give what the other wanted. It was a grim little business at first, especially because the skirmishes tended to be between the IRA and their fellow Irishmen in the government constabulary. The pace was heated up by the young IRB man, Michael Collins, who with his daring raids and lightning strikes was making quite a name for himself. But it was very partial warfare, all the same. The British government finally struck a deal with the Ulster Protestants, giving them a separate parliament of their own up in the northern counties. But that meant that the Catholics of Ulster were once again trapped under the dominance of a Protestant caste, as they had been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Soon there were riots up in Ulster.

But for the rest of Ireland, there was to be one more hateful invasion. In began in January 1920.

“If they had to send help,” Sheridan Smith complained, “could they not have found men better than these?”

The Black and Tans. Ex-soldiers and sailors, mostly, quickly recruited. Mercenaries really, to fight the Irish guerrilla tactics of Collins’s IRA. When they joined, or arrived in Ireland, they were given standard issue army trousers, which were khaki, and green police uniform jackets. This ugly mixture of khaki and green soon earned them their descriptive nickname: Black and Tans. By the latter part of the year, there were ten thousand of them in Ireland. And their game was very simple: strike and retaliate. Shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Suspicion is proof, especially if the suspect is dead. In many ways, they ignored law and justice entirely. When Collins and a hit squad caught and killed a group if British intelligence officers one Sunday morning in November, the Black and Tans didn’t bother to go looking for Collins. They just went round to the big football game in Dublin’s Croke Park and opened fire on the crowd. Twelve innocent spectators were killed in that affair.

If they were meant to frighten, they did. If they were intended to impress, they did not, for they were despised. But if they had your identity as a “Sinn Feiner,” they were after you like a pack of wild dogs.

It was five days after the Croke Park incident that early one afternoon, Caitlin heard a knocking at the front door of he house. As she happened to be in the hall, she opened the door herself, and was rather surprised when Willy O’Byrne stepped into the hall, closed the door quickly behind him, and said:

“Would you like to save my life?”

“If you tell me why.”

“I’ve not much time. I got one of the Croke Park Black and Tans. His best friend is after me. I was trying to kill him as well, but he has reinforcements. I gave them the slip only a moment ago, in the lane. But they’ll go house to house I’m sure. They know me, unfortunately.”

“By name?”

“And by face.” He glanced out of the window. “Better get out of sight. Unless you want me to go out and face them.”

“This way.” She indicated the drawing room, which was at the back of the house and gave onto the garden.

“The irony is, you’ll never guess the name of the man that’s after me. God I should have shot him first, before the other one.”

“Tell me.”

“Victor Budge. The old woman’s heir. Out-of-work army man. He’s a devil. I’ll see him dead yet.”

The knocker on the front door sounded. Caitlin had to think fast. “If you go out through the garden, there’s a lane at the back. But . . .”

“Exactly. They’ll have a man waiting there.”

She looked at the window that gave out onto the back. It had long, heavy curtains that fell to the floor and, in the best manner, swept the carpet like a long train on a dress. It was so obvious, it would do.

“Get behind it and don’t move,” she said. She would have to think very fast indeed.

A moment later, the maid announced that some soldiers wanted to come in. Caitlin sat down on an upright chair near the centre of the room.

“Show them in.”

“There were half a dozen of them. The officer was a big man with a brutal face. She smiled at him.

“We are searching for a fugitive. Has anyone come into this house?”

“Only yourselves. But what sort of fugitive is it? Am I in danger?”

The idea that she might be in danger did not seem to interest them.

“Dark-haired man.” The officer was looking round the room.

“I am Countess Caitlin Birne. And you, Sir?”

“Beg pardon. Captain Budge.”

“Budge?” Her face lit up as if she’d hoped to meet him all her life.

“You are not connected with Mrs. Budge of Rathconan? But you must be.”

“She is a kinswoman.” His manner altered, softened a little.

“I cannot help you with any fugitive, Captain Budge, but I do hope you will stop and take a little tea with me.” She looked at his men. “I know the Captain’s family,” she explained, unnecessarily, with a beaming smile. “Do sit down. I will call for tea.”

“Really can’t,” said Budge.

“Your aunt is one of our greatest characters. You know, of course, that she says she’s coming back to Rathconan in her next life, as a bird? Don’t you think it wonderful?” Budge looked awkward. “They say she has worn the same turban and never taken it off in thirty years,” she rattled on happily. “You have seen her drawings of the naked Indian dancers, of course.”

By now Budge was growing red. His men were looking as if they’d be glad to hear more.

“Do you also, Captain, believe in the transmigration of souls?” she ventured.

“Certainly not. Church of England. Eccentric old lady. Must go.”

“I do wish,” she said wistfully, “that you’d stay.”

But the little group of Black and Tans were already being led out of the room. After the front door had closed behind them, there was a long pause. Then Willy’s voice came from behind the curtain.

“If I’d laughed, that would have been the end of me.”

“I suppose,” she said, “you’d better stay here for a bit.”

It was that evening after they had dined together, and they were sitting alone in the drawing room, with the curtains carefully drawn, when she found herself looking at him thoughtfully. He was a handsome man. He was capable of warmth, but never, she felt sure, as much as his old father was. Well, she thought, he has proved right about most things, all the same. If that makes him cold, it is his destiny.

He was looking at her.

“Have you ever had a lover?” he asked.

“No.” She paused. “I assume there have been many women in your life.”

“A few. Of course.” He nodded, then smiled. “Do you think it’s time?”

“Yes,” she said, “I think it is.”

It was certainly time. For him, God knows, she thought, as for any other. He stayed in hiding in her house for ten days.

If the affair was not continued, she was not greatly hurt. She had known, she supposed, that it would not be. He had made another journey to America. And after that he was away again.

And she was glad that she had taken no further part in the fighting, for the painful choices that followed would have been impossible for her. When, a year later, the Sinn Fein negotiators, including ruthless Collins himself, had signed a treaty with Britain to bring the conflict to an end, it had been an imperfect thing. Ireland was to become a Free State, a dominion of the British Empire like Canada. Six of the northern counties were to be grouped together in a safe haven for Protestants and an oppression for the Catholics still living there. Even the border was unclear. She could see why de Valera refused to go along with it.

But she herself, like the majority of Irish people, could live with even an imperfect treaty, perhaps not forever, but for a generation. And when de Valera and his followers started a second conflict, at war with their own colleagues now, she found herself asking not why, but when—when will it ever end? The Civil War was full of anomalies. Collins, the IRB firebrand, was now defending the compromise treaty, quite ruthlessly, against a new republican army known as the Irregulars. Old comrades in arms were killing each other. Collins himself was assassinated before it was over. Strangely, most of the women she had trained with in Cumann na mBan, had chosen to go with de Valera. Even kindly, funny Rita had done so. Caitlin could not have gone that way herself. And when, in 1923, the conflict had finally wound down, she had been relieved only that the Irish Free State, however imperfect, could now live in peace.

Only once was she called into action. Late in July, in 1922, she received an unexpected letter. It was delivered by hand by a boy on a bicycle who would not stay.

When she had read the letter, she did not hesitate. She went to the bank and made a withdrawal. She packed a number of items carefully, including one or two that she might need herself. She owned a car, nowadays, which she liked to drive herself. She carefully put everything in it, told the housekeeper that she might be away for a few days, and drove southwards towards the western side of the Wicklow Mountains.

She found the farmhouse quite easily. It was near the village of Blessington.

He was remarkably little changed. It was obvious that he had suffered a good deal, and having examined his leg, she told him: “It’s not a break, but it’s a very bad sprain. You’ll have to rest it if you want to walk.”

“It’s good of you to come,” Willy said. “I knew you would.”

“What happened?” she asked.

The story was not a long one. She hadn’t been entirely surprised when she’d heard that Willy O’Byrne had joined the anti-Treaty republican forces in the Civil War. And things were going badly with them. He’d gone out to rendezvous with republican forces gathering from several parts of the island at Blessington. They had been badly mauled by the Provisional Government men and had to fall back. From Blessington, they had had to disperse. But he couldn’t walk, and as he’d quarrelled with the leader of the men who’d gone up into the hills, he’d thought it best to wait down there alone. “It’s over for me, I think,” he told her. “The struggle isn’t worth it any more.” But he couldn’t just wait for the Provisional government men to find him. The Civil War was proving a far bloodier business than the old conflict with the British had been. “If they find me, I’m a dead man,” he told her calmly.

“I can hide you in Dublin if you want,” she said.

“No. It’s Rathconan I’d like to get to,” he replied. “I think my father could look after me. If not . . .”

“I brought you two hundred pounds,” she said. “That would take you to France, if you need.”

“My only worry,” he said, “is those fellows who went up into the mountains ahead of me. They were an undisciplined rabble, and they had no love for me.”

“I’ll drive you up there,” she reassured him, “and I brought the Webley.”

It was a small, winding road. Now and then, looking back, one could see the huge panorama of the Liffey Plain spreading out all the way to Kildare. Willy sat in the front with her. He seemed more interested in looking ahead. Once passing a cattle man, he asked if a party of troops from Blessington had come up that way the day before. Yes, the man said, but they’d taken the road southwards. They hadn’t gone across the mountain road towards Rathconan. This seemed to please Willy considerably. “We shall be there soon,” he remarked. “You’ll see my father again.” Going over the top of the mountain pass and starting to descend again, the little road was hardly more than a track. And as at last they came towards Rathconan, a little group of children by the roadside turned to stare, and ran to spread the news; for a motor car was a rarity indeed up there. As they approached, she smiled as she caught sight of the long, lovely vista down towards the Irish Sea. The car backfired with a loud bang as they passed the gates of the big house. She laughed. If old Rosa Budge was there, she’d probably think it was a message from the spirit world.

Fintan O”Byrne’s cottage seemed to be deserted. She looked inside. No sign of him.

“Do you want me to help you in?” she called.

“No. I’ll sit here in the sun,” Willy said. “I’ll stay where I am. If you walk down the lane to the Brennans, they’ll probably know where he is.”

“You’ll be all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be, at my father’s house at Rathconan?”

“I’ll be back,” she said.

The feel of the afternoon sun on his face was really very pleasant. It seemed to Willy that when the business of war was over, he could do worse than return up here. He might find a wife. It was time he married. What should she be like? Like Caitlin, perhaps, but not like Caitlin. Money was a terrible thing, when you came down to it. The ten days he’d spent in her fine house on Fitzwilliam Square had taught him that. Comfortable, splendid even. But suffocating. By the end of it, he could scarcely breathe. He hadn’t told her that, though. No point. Apart from that, he’d loved her. Should he ever tell her so? he wondered. He closed his eyes.

Had he not been up in the safety of Rathconan, he’d have heard the steps when they were farther off. As it was, they were only ten feet away when he heard the soft tread on the turf. Even so, he didn’t open his eyes. He tried to decide who they belonged to. Not Caitlin. A little two heavy. His father? Possibly. One of the Brennans? Could be. He smiled and waited.

“Asleep?”

He opened his eyes. The thickset face was smiling. The eyes hard. The twin barrels of the shotgun a foot from his nose.

“Heard a car backfire. Thought I’d take a look. Never know who may be paying you a visit, these days.”

Victor Budge. He’d forgotten him. Supposed he’d gone back to England. Willy was quite sure that he’d have heard if old Rose Budge had died and Victor had come into his own. Mind you, with all the fighting and the travelling of the last few months, he’d been sadly out of touch with his father.

“Is old Mrs Budge . . . ?”

“Alive and well. Still waiting to turn into a hawk.” He seemed to find this funny. But the gun didn’t move. “We have an arrangement. I take care of the estate now. I’ve been up here two months. I wondered if I might see you here some day.”

“Aren’t you afraid? A man like yourself mightn’t be liked too well up here, I should say.”

“I’ll take my chances. We have a score to settle. You killed a friend of mine, remember?”

“Perhaps. A long time ago.”

“I don’t think so.”

Caitlin had told him she’d brought her pistol. He wondered where it was. He didn’t think she’d be carrying it with her. Under the seat perhaps? He could try to dive for it, but he’d have to be right. First time. Even if his leg let him move like that. He couldn’t think where else to try. On the other hand, to duck like that: afterwards it would look as if he’d been too much of a coward to face his death.

He might make a grab for the barrel of Budge’s gun. Foolish thought. Budge knew what he was doing. He’d just die looking like an idiot. So he learned back.

“You would shoot a man in cold blood?”

“I’ll shoot you like a dog.”

“How will you explain it?”

“Doubt that I’ll need to. Times like these.”

“Ireland’s curse upon you, then.”

Caitlin heard the bang when she was standing outside the Brennans’ cottage. She ran. She raced up the track towards the car, in time to see that Willy had been pulled onto the ground. A man was walking away. He was carrying a shotgun. She looked down at Willy’s face. It wasn’t there, just a great red mess of flesh and shot.

She reached under the car seat, and called out. She man turned. She recognised him. Victor Budge. The Black and Tan who’d come looking for Willy. He recognised her, too. The girl who’d known old Rosa. He frowned as he worked it all out.

“You killed him,” she called.

“What of that?”

The single shot caught him exactly between the eyes. She hadn’t lost her skill. She stared at Budge for a moment, nodded to herself, and put her Webley on Willy’s right hand, curling his fingers round it.

She heard voices. She stepped back. Several people were arriving. One of them, she saw at once, was old Fintan O’Byrne.

At first, seeing the bloody mess of the face on the ground, he did not understand. Then, as she came towards him and took his arm, he did. He bowed his head and sank to his knees.

He had been kneeling by Willy for a minute or two when he looked up at her.

“They shot each other?’

“They must have,” she said.

“I thought the two shots were some time apart.”

“They can’t have been.”

He paused to look at her a long while.

“No. I must have been mistaken.”

He got up stiffly to his feet, walked over to Victor Budge, noted the hole neatly between the eyes, and nodded. As he passed by her again, he touched her arm, and quietly murmured, “Thank you.”

Some years later, when Mrs. Rosa Budge passed to her next life, the Rathconan estate was sold. Sometimes new owners of such estates would find the local people a little shy with them. They have learned, after all, to guard against strangers coming to dwell upon their land. It is a lesson learned down many centuries. But the new owner of Rathconan, with her flashing green eyes and her husband and children was always welcome from the first. After all, Caitlin belonged there.