At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [208]
How it must anguish them, she thought, the young, to know once more their hopes are deceived. How shall we ever expect their pardon? This lad would go out alone, she made no slightest doubt, with his bare hands to fight, were but one good man to lead the way. That one good man lay in chains in London. Now when she saw them joined in prayer, how white and fine were his fingers: a virile delicacy that carried her to Casement. How he had delighted, that noble-hearted man, in the upright spirit of the young.
Poor dear Casement. Yet one other uncrowned king in this land of kings uncrowned. This foolish bungling land, where the sole occasion they came to a coronation, it was the baker’s boy from Oxford they must light upon, Lambert Simnel, the creature. The shame of it all. Was it anywhere but in Ireland that a rebellion could be canceled by a notice in the press? Nothing could be salvaged. Now the English would confiscate all arms. The leaders would be imprisoned or banished. Conscription would be enforced, what manhood remained to be bled in France. Let her go, let her go with what grace was left her, into exile in England. She might come to see Casement there. A personal recompense after this national disgrace.
The mountains, the mountains, they called to her now. The Mass continued in a kind of dumb-show, while in her mind she motored away from this city, beyond its clustering villages, till the road began its climb to the moors. Dublin lay behind, and before and about her were the great shoulders of hills, the heather and gorse and bog-grass, green and pink and gold.
There was a spirit in those hills which the foreigner had never touched. Cities they had raised and walls against it. The cities reached their roads to trample it. Nothing dismayed that spirit: neither kindness nor crowbars swayed it a jot. That spirit, it could drive the foreigner mad for freedom, or wicked to stamp that freedom out. It was deep in the land. In the mist it hung, it seeped below in the suck of turf.
Eveline needed but think of those mountains and she felt it within her, that spirit, a flame in her breast. She could not reason it. Nothing would it benefit her, Ireland free or subject. For all she cared, nothing would it benefit Ireland. Ireland might go forward, she might go better forward and faster to freedom, by ballot, committee, constitutional reform. She might be richer for it, more blessed, her people content, her industries prosperous, the miserable drain of emigration staunched. But nothing suchlike would assuage that spirit. The hurts were ancient, they were deep in the land. That spirit was a flame whose tallow was blood. War was its cry: no hand-fed Home Rule, but liberty asserted by right of arms.
My name is MacMurrough, my patrimony the mountains. Over the hills would I go, over the military road.
Her eyes closed and she felt the soreness behind them. She would go nowhere now save into exile in England. And every day her body healed brought exile that day closer. They would take her under guard to London and place her there in her brother’s keeping. That meddlesome woman. Harridan, harpie. She used be seen motoring in the hills. They say she had a hand in gun-running and such. Making a spectacle of her name and sex. Had ought to wear a cap and sew at home. It’s easy known why no man would have her. Would live in mortal fear for his trousers.
Christe eleison! In glad confident voice the server called down a savior’s blessing. Kyrie eleison, the priest agreed.
Eva rewoke to the Mass before her. Something had changed, the impression was distinct upon her, while her mind had wandered. He seemed to have grown in this interlude, the serving lad, and the space between altar and nave, contrarily, to have gulfed. She saw his bare white throat and the hair on his forehead damp and a little blown. His hair was black, so very black. As she watched, she was aware of an inexplicable exhilaration—there, she felt it, patter, in her heart. He glanced to her, and she caught the shine in his eyes. His head lifted, proud and joyous, with a