Redemption - Leon Uris [127]
Yet he had now risen to the greatness I had always known was his, but feared for him to claim. I slunk away to Dublin.
The Parliament had legislated “Star Chamber” proceedings, straight out of the Spanish Inquisition.
By a miracle, Atty and I were privy to the first of the trials. The British did not know going in that Conor would not accept the deal, and we were there to assure they carried out the terms. Again, we were under the oath of silence as part of the bargain.
Conor Larkin, in chains, in a dungeon-turned-courtroom hidden in a military barracks in the Wicklow mountains, denounced England’s presence in Ireland as a perverse, greedy corruption of England’s own Common Law and God’s will.
He denounced England’s attempt to destroy the ancient Celtic culture and the Irish race.
He denounced the English contempt for the Irish people that made them appear inferior in British eyes and thus allowed England to go out into the world and likewise cast browns and blacks as inferiors…grist for the colonial mill…to be saved and redeemed by a superior English society.
He denounced the proceedings as a total mockery of British justice.
He predicted that before the century was out, the colonizers would pack their kits and be drummed out of every colony in the world where they had imposed their bloody repression.
He did what he did, not knowing if he’d ever see trees again or walk a single step in free air, much less live to see another day.
The British were outraged. In the end they owned the courts, the military, the press, the industry, the banks, the schools, the land.
You see, he made his protest from a dark and lonely place, but he made the British blink.
In the face of his condemnation they did not take his life. Conor was remanded, instead, to thirty years in prison. For his hostile behavior, twenty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails was added to his sentence.
To us, British infallibility had been cracked ever so slightly. We were moved, inspired by one man who had had enough. A rebellion, some day faraway, had been born.
God and my beliefs had been going through a revolving turnstile all my life. I always knew he was there. Using my left-handed logic, I always tried to find a rationale for why he continued to abandon the Irish. The Irish, whose only crime was not being born English.
For the first time I questioned the wisdom, the compassion, the love from God and even the existence of God himself. Why does he demand that his finest sons have to suffer having the living shit kicked out of them?
So, let me tell you about the cat-o’-nine-tails. The whip is a braided leather tail three feet long. Not one tail—but nine of them—so each stroke is worth nine of the ordinary bull whip. In order to keep the ends of the tails from unraveling during a whipping, they are dipped in lead. An accomplished whipper can lay the nine tails across the victim’s back…just so…so that the lead tips curl under his armpit and shred his flesh like cabbage for coleslaw.
From later reports I heard that Conor refused a stretcher and walked back to his cell.
At the same moment that Conor received his lashes, part of Shelley’s body was found tied to a lamppost in the Shankill. Parts of her dismembered corpse were strewn about the alleyway…over fifty stab wounds…and at least that many hammer blows were struck.
On the wall behind her, written in her blood, the words, PAPIST WHORE.
The following months can only be imagined. Perhaps even Conor was unaware of what was happening. To my dismay I learned that one man cannot bear another man’s pain. I wanted so desperately to be able to take some of his agony as my own. No matter how dear and willing the friend, the sufferer must suffer alone.
I have spoken to Warder Hugh Dalton on four occasions. Dalton was the senior Catholic guard at Portlaoise Prison. He inherited the task of keeping R.C. prisoners under control.
In order to carry out his job, he had long learned to inure himself to the pain of his charges. That all changed the